Nine months into its implementation, the Nigeria Customs Service has commended freight forwarders operating at the ports in Lagos for their compliance with the provisions of the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR), confirming that there has been a drastic reduction in the number of crowd that usually throng the port on daily basis.
Nine months into its implementation, the Nigeria Customs Service has commended freight forwarders operating at the ports in Lagos for their compliance with the provisions of the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR), confirming that there has been a drastic reduction in the number of crowd that usually throng the port on daily basis.
The Asycuda Project Manager of the Apapa Area 1 Command of Customs, Deputy Comptroller Yussuf Malanta Ibrahim told Shipping Position Daily in an interview that the compliance level of stakeholders in the clearance of cargoes is commendable.
He attributed the reduction in the crowd at the port to the efficiency of the PAAR process. Yussuf noted that the Apapa Command of Customs receives not less than 100 complaints on daily basis, but added that it was able to sieve and treat them with utmost dispatch.
"The compliance level is growing all the time, we know where we were coming from and where we are heading to, the trading public; importers and agents are trying so much when it comes to compliance level"
"You can see it in the way you see people around, when there is compliance you will not see too many people around, look at the scenario now, people are not around because things are moving, the process is moving fast and so, no complains" he said.
Reacting to allegations leveled against the customs by Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) on cargo alert and query of value of cargoes after PAAR is issued, Yussuf said that this is necessary in order to discourage importers trying to circumvent the Customs system.
He charged freight forwarders to continue educating their importers on the need to be transparent and be sincere in their cargo declarations, "the more the importer complies, the less the pressure on the agents", he stressed.
Yussuf defended that cargo alerts are intended to guide the examining officers on cargoes that were wrongly declared, even as he added that necessary sanctions and penalties are applied.
"For every defaulter, there must be a penalty and the penalty is stated clearly in our CEMA book, you do it intentionally as a false declaration, if we allow you to do it again you will continue" he said.
Also speaking with our correspondent in his office, the image maker of the Tin Can Island Customs, Chief Superintendent of Customs, Chris Osunkwo said that the PAAR has so far been a huge success.
According to Osunkwo, the Customs had in April 2014, changed its transmitter and this has boosted the rate at which PAAR is issued. He said currently, customs now wait for banks to transmit PAAR and not vice versa.
"PAAR is a huge success, Customs has achieved ground zero, we now wait for banks to upload Form 'M' not that they are waiting for us, as I speak to you, if you go to PAAR ruling office, officers are just sitting there waiting for the banks to upload the form 'M'"
"The port is dry now because there are no complaints, it only booms or sees people when there are complaints, you can measure the pulse of Tin Can from this office, when you see them trooping in, it means there are complaints originating from the terminal, but now we are on cruise speed, compliance level is higher"
"Anytime seizure drops, it means there is increase in compliance" he said.
Discussion about this post