Nigeria’s Comptroller-General of Customs, Alhaji Dikko Abdullahi says the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has introduced a new simplified electronic clearance process to attain the 24-hour cargo dwell time in Nigerian ports.
Speaking at a one-day seminar on self assessment and up-front payment on Wednesday in Lagos, Abdullahi said that the ultimate goal was for the service to compete with the best customs administrations in the world.
Abdullahi, who was represented by the Lagos Zonal Co-ordinator of NCS, Mr. Yinusa Saka, said that the essence of the new method was to fine-tune customs approach in the modernization process.
“The world is going e-commerce, e-transaction, as well as e-payment and so everything must be done in a transparent manner,” he said.
He urged clearing agents, importers and other port operators to be transparent and honest in their declarations.
According to him, the 28 day cargo dwell time at the Nigerian ports is too long as the service is considering 14 days and he urged them to note that the service is not interested in auctioning of goods.
Abdullahi said that the service was committed to blocking all revenue leakages, adding that port operators should not hesitate to expose anybody who engaged in any shady deal.
“We want to attain 24-hours cargo clearance target and if possible 12 hours,” he said.
In his remarks, the Assistant Comptroller-General of the Automated System of Customs Data (ASYCUDA), Mr Nathaniel Ihenacho said that the vision of the service was ultimately to make all transactions electronic.
Ihenacho said that the three tripod – e-clearance, e-manifest and e-transmission would interface to achieve the desired 24-hours cargo clearance objective of the service.
He said that shipping companies had been told that as from October 19, 2009, all manifests coming to customs should be fed into the customs server electronically without any manual interference.
“We believe that if the service should build a robust risk management system, we will be able to implement the simplified clearance procedures,” he said.
An official of Webb Fontaine, Mr Michael Rusita explained that the new clearance procedure involved two zones – Traders and Customs zones.
According to him, the clearing agents would gather their documents together and go to the Direct Traders Input (DTI) cafes and capture the Single Goods Declaration (SGD) form.
The operation of DTI is part of efforts to bring all stakeholders involved in cargo clearance under one community where all processes are electronically-driven.
Source African Press Agency
