The much expected review of the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA) may have been flagged-off even as the move has also pitched different stakeholders against one another.
The much expected review of the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA) may have been flagged-off even as the move has also pitched different stakeholders against one another.
Snippets from the proposed Act which is still in a 100- page draft form indicate that it seeks to outlaw engagement of agents to carry out pre-shipment or destination inspection of Nigeria’s imports. This is more striking since the contracts that were entered into with the three destination inspection agents ends in December 2012. It also did not make reference to the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria CRFFN) on issues relating to issuance of customs license.
It is cited as “a bill for an act to repeal the customs and excise management act 1958, as amended, and to replace it with the Nigeria customs service act 2011 to regulate the administration and management of the Nigeria Customs Service and for purposes ancillary thereto”.
The new law seeks to repeal: Customs and Excise Management Act Cap. C45; Customs and Excise Management (Disposal of Goods) Act Cap. C46; Board of Customs and Excise (Amendment) Act Cap. C47, the Duties (Dumped and Subsidised Goods) Act Cap. C48 and the Customs and Excise Management (Amendment) Act 2003; and
A section of the draft which was made available to our correspondent last week specifically says that: “The use of mandatory pre-shipment or post-shipment inspection services for customs purposes is prohibited. Any existing mandatory pre-shipment and/or post-shipment inspection services used by Customs or the Government in connection with the classification and valuation of goods or other customs control matters shall be terminated no later than 31 December 2012”.
Still being referred to as the “CEMA Working group Draft”, Shipping Position Weekly however confirmed that the new law is being midwife by the National Task Force on Customs Reforms and that the committee is presently collating inputs from stakeholders.
Another controversial portion of the draft is the one that deals with requirements for licensing customs agents. Against expectations, the new law do not make any reference to membership of the Council for Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) as a pre- condition for obtaining customs license.
And perhaps in reaction to the development, CRFFN has also banned its members from commenting on the proposed law, even as its registrar, Sir Mike Jukwe said that the Council is yet to look at the document.
He however told our correspondent that a meeting of members of the governing council would be conveyed where CRFFN official position would be agreed upon.
According to him, it is for this reason that no association is permitted to comment on the proposed new Customs law. “Nobody is permitted to comment on it, we don’t want any association to say anything about it, we are bringing everything under control, we don’t want a situation where this association will say something and another association will say another thing. The Council will call all of them together and we will decide on what our position will be as freight forwarders”.
Jukwe also warned that any association that makes any unauthorized comment will be sanctioned. “The associations are not allowed to operate outside the control of CRFFN, they are now under control, freight forwarding is being regulated unlike before, no association has the right to go and talk on its own, those of them saying anything about the new Act is null and void”, he told Shipping Position Weekly.
And confirming that the Task force is the arrowhead of the new law, one of its members, Mr Lucky Amiwero also told our correspondent last week that the group is currently at the meet-the-stakeholders stage.
He confirmed that the new law will make provision for things that were either not in the old laws or that were not well taken care of. Some of these according to him are: the controversial Risk Assessment Report (RAR), automation, penalties, revenue collection and procedure.
Amiwero also confirmed that the draft actually came from the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Task Force, even as he confirmed that the document that is being worked on at the moment has already been subjected to inputs from stakeholders in Lagos and that the Task force was in Port Harcourt last week to take inputs from stakeholders in the Oil and Gas Free Trade Zone.
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