A stakeholders’ meeting that was put together by the Nigeria Customs Service in Apapa last week to further brainstorm on the much-touted efforts at 48-hour cargo clearance was boycotted by shipping companies, fuelling speculations that the shipping companies were suspicious of a policy ambush.
Meant to be a stakeholders’ sensitisation seminar to introduce another set of banks to the six weeks old system of electronic payment of customs revenue, the one day event was packaged by the Apapa area one command of the Customs.
It was to be used to formally introduce the banks to importers, freight forwarders, terminal operators, destination inspection agents to the six banks and appraise the extent of progress that have been recorded.
While other stakeholders were in attendance, no shipping company or shipping agent attended the parley, a development which gave rise to insinuations that the Nigeria Customs Service does not have any powers to influence other agencies that are operating in the ports.
Meanwhile, Zenith bank, Intercontinental bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, Oceanic bank, Sterling bank, and Fidelity bank have secured approval to join Diamond bank as the banks where importers and licensed customs agents can make payments electronically.
Applauding the service for the e-payment scheme, customs boss in Apapa port, Mrs Hanatu Suleiman disclosed that since August when the scheme was flagged off, Apapa command has recorded tremendous progress in cargo clearance.
“We have been able to reduce the usual crowd at the CPC to the barest minimum, because everybody has to use the cyber café. And to a great extent, all goods under e-payment regime are cleared the same day or at least within 48 hours out of the CPC.”
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She however frowned at what she called disobedience on the part of some stakeholders for being responsible for the congestion that is being experienced at the ports. These people according to her, usually refuse to supply full information about their consignments in readiness for scanning.
Suleiman explained further that with the inclusion of the six banks, e-payment will be able to take a stronger swing as documents can now leave the Customs Processing Centres (CPC), while containers can leave the ports on schedule.
However, investigations by Shipping Position Weekly confirmed that one of the reasons for which shipping companies boycotted the seminar is as a result of what some personnel of shipping companies described as the tendency to waste time discussing the same issues each time and not making significant process.
The commercial manager of one the affected companies told our correspondent that the issue of delay in the process of cargo clearance is not an issue to be discussed everyday and that ample time is usually wasted at such meetings.
According to him, rather than waste valuable time discussing the same issues at each stakeholders’ meeting, we expect that the customs will be more proactive in the quest to achieve faster cargo clearance time in the ports.
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