Tin Can 2 Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) said it has generated over N12 billion as revenue in the first half of 2018.
The command however attributed the huge revenue drive under the period to tariff collected on the Free Trade Zone (FTZ).
The amount generated by the command in the first half almost tripled when compared to same period in the previous year of 2017.
According to a statement made available to our correspondent on Tuesday, the revenue target of the command for the year was N10, 698, 871, 789.50, but the command generated N4, 317, 673, 734.28 amounting to 40 percent of the total revenue for the year.
The Public Relations Officer of the command, A. S. Farouk, said the chunk of the revenue came from Free Trade Zone.
He lamented that the challenges of bad roads, made it difficult in getting cargoes transferred to the command as part of the factors rubbing off on the command’s ability to generate more revenues into government coffers.
He therefore pleaded with the federal government to dedicate railway to the Tin can 2 command that would bring containers to the command to avoid trucks being stuck on the roads in the course of transferring cargoes to the terminal.
The spokesman added that the new customs platform, Nigeria Information and Customs Integrated System (NICIS 2) had initial hitches but that the problem had been overcome.
Farouk said that stakeholders have since learnt the process through regular interaction and had been made simple as the days went by.
In 2018, the command has the target of N17, 193, 280, 038.70 and N12, 611, 451, 133.00 has been generated within the first six months translating into 73.4 percent.
In January 2018, the command generated N1, 907, 276, 317.00, in February, N1, 579, 105,205.00; N2, 846, 401, 343.00 in March; N1, 603, 225, 559.00 in April as against N834, 679, 169.00 in January, N919, 110, 991.00 in February, 649, 110, 991.00 March and N781, 182, 101.00 in 2017 respectively.
Others are; N2, 267, 965, 574.00 in May, N2, 407, 477, 135.00 in June, 2018 against N481, 871, 349.00 and N651, 145, 296.00 in May and June, 2017 respectively.
