LAGOS FEBRUARY 12TH (URHOBOTODAY)-The fear of Hameed Ali, Controller General of Customs may be a non existent illusion going by what goes on in Apapa Port where customs have a new Area Controller.
A perfect game of wrong declaration aimed at compromising complete duty collection is becoming a norm in the system where Comptroller Willy Egbudin holds forte.
A recent case of a 40 foot container said to contain 848 cartons of textiles on a bill of laden with container number MRKU4313964 was manifested as 20 foot container on a Single Goods Declaration form prepared by Apapa customs and declared as computer accessories since textile attracts a higher duty.
In addition to declaring textiles as computer accessories, the volume which may have filled the 40 foot container was also reduced to 20 foot to further achieve lesser duty payment for the importer and agent.
Textile which attracts about 20 percent duty is believed to have been changed for computer accessories to achieve 5 percent duty payment.A whooping 15 percent is lost thereby reducing government revenue to about 25 percent of what ought to have been collected.
Investigation reveal that a whooping 75 percent of the due duty payment is lost to this organised sleaze, putting the government at an avoidable loss of huge revenue running into billions of Naira from the nation’s largest port.
Documents exclusively obtained by The Journal, shows copious manipulations of the SGD form where diapers, computer accessories, sealing machines and other products of lesser duty amounting to 5 percent are imputed in place of tyres,ceramic tiles and tin tomatoes which attracts 20 percent duty ,30 percent levy.
Sources told this magazine that hundreds of containers are exiting the port under this arrangement and that government revenue can be increased far beyond the projected N1 trillion revenue target for 2016.
A written questionnaire to the Customs Area Controller and copied to Emmanuel Ekpa, spokesman of the command was not responded to as at the time of writing this report.
Ekpa who confirmed that his boss received the inquiry told the magazine on phone that his Controller was yet to respond to it.
Aside the huge revenue loss, sources disclosed to The Journal that imports that ought to be subjected to Standards Organisation of Nigeria regulation through its conformity assessment programme.
Source: Journal of freight and Energy