The Onne command of the Nigeria Custom Service (NCS) has commended the International Oil Companies (IOC) operating in the Free Trade Zone of Onne port in Rivers state for their cooperation and for working in tandem with the service in collecting revenues accruable to the federal government.
Speaking with Shipping Position Weekly correspondent recently in Abuja, the Deputy Comptroller in charge of Onne command of the Nigeria Custom Service, Mr. Bapatel Umar explained that on his transfer to the Free Trade Zone, he was able to discover duty underpayments from the oil companies to the tune of N1.2 billion, even as he explained that majority of them were however willing to pay the monies.
Bapatel explained that the importers at the FTZ who are mainly the oil majors have been declaring wrongly and according to him, the Custom was unable to accrue these monies resulting from underpayments because of reforms that have been ongoing for the past two years in the service.
“On getting to this command, I went straight into the system and was able to bring out all unpaid declarations from the previous years, the system have been computerized so I just contacted all the importers, in the FTZ, the importers are companies that are well known and can never run away from Nigeria, they are oil companies and they are willing to pay, but due to different programmes and changes in the service as we have been under reform for the previous two years, the moneys were not discovered” he said.
He said that revenues generated from the command when he assumed duty in the year 2010 was N17 billion as against the year 2009 which stood at about N12billion. “I use the little experience that I had to ensure that all the revenues that were outstanding are recovered and this contributed to the increase in the revenue”, he added.
Continuing he explained that “the second aspect that have helped in the increase is the classification of the oil equipment and so on, I ensure that proper examination of all the oil facilities is conducted and the right dues applicable are paid”.
Industry sources confirmed that there are about 150 oil companies presently operating in the strategic Onne free trade zone and even currently, the area is experiencing high influx of oil investors from the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, France, Italy, USA and many more.
It was also confirmed that the influx of the multinationals is unconnected with the fact that the Onne oil and gas free trade zone is strategic and very close to the Atlantic Ocean.
“It takes only one hour and ten minutes from the port to the Atlantic Ocean by speedboat” a source said.
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