The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the introduction of an Electronic Cargo Tracking Note Scheme for the country.
Minister of Transportation, Alhaji Mu’azu Sambo, made this known to State House correspondents, at the end of the Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said: “Council considered and approved our submission to put in place for Nigeria, as it is in 26 other African countries, an Electronic Cargo Tracking Note Scheme in order to among other things take care of under declaration at Ports, secure our imports and exports and provide transparency in cargo invoicing and declarations.”
Sambo further stated that the scheme, when fully implemented, could raise the revenue profile of Nigeria to about 90-235 million dollars annually.
“The implementation of the scheme will solve the problems of under declaration, concealment and wrong classification of cargo, which are the primary causes of revenue leakages, insecurity and general security issues at the borders.
“The deployment and implementation of this state of the art ECT scheme will ensure the elimination of loopholes on border operations and boost the revenue of the Nigerian government in form of duties, Port charges and levies.
“It is expected that this scheme will generate revenues to the Nigerian government ranging from about 90 million dollars per anum to a peak of about 235 million dollars per anum,” he said.
The minister said the proposed electronic platform would be deployed by a consortium of five companies made up of a foreign technical partner and four local companies at no cost to the Nigerian government.
The revenue sharing formula will be 60-40 per cent, with the Federal Government taking the greater share.
The public-private partnership, Sambo said, would enable the tracking of oil exports and “eliminate oil theft” that has cost the government billions of dollars.
Between January and August 2022, Nigeria lost over $2bn to oil theft, an inquiry by the Senate found last November.
The findings which were presented to the Senate in a report revealed that only 66 per cent of the country’s oil production could be “effectively guaranteed.”
It said the other 33 per cent was affected by theft and lost production “due to the third-party easy access on land terrain.”
A month after the Senate’s findings, the National Security Adviser, Maj-Gen. Babagana Monguno (retd.), warned that the Federal Government might lost $23bn in 2023 if crude oil theft festers.
Monguno lamented that the country currently produces one million barrels of crude oil per day, 50 per cent of the two million barrels daily target set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
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