Contrary to insinuations that Nigeria Customs Service in Tincan Port has created a benchmark for duty collection on imports, the service on Thurday disclosed it never did so.
Uche Ejesieme, Spokesman for Tincan Customs said that the benchmark being talked about doesn’t exist and could not be applied for any reason.
Ejesieme, a Superintendent of Customs who expressed surprise about the unfounded information, added that the entire service including Tincan command have guidelines and known templates for duty assessment and collection.
He said parameters like Cost, Insurance and Freight (CIF) and specified duty rates in the tariff book still applies and that Tincan Customs cannot act in isolation or deviance to the rules.
“It is not possible for us to issue benchmark on a 20 footer container without recourse to it’s contents. Cargoes like supermarket goods cannot be assessed same way with cars.
“Even a container carrying one car and another carrying more than one will not pay same duty . Our attention is on the value of the contents of containers. Things like type of car, age, size and other issues are considered.
“For instance, artificial resin with a CIF value of N2.5m pays 5 percent duty and there are various duty rates for different products and commodities
” As a command, we saw posters around suggesting resistance to a benchmark that doesn’t exist. I advise all our stakeholders to take advantage of our dispute resolution mechanism.
” All protests you have seen in recent times emanated from some persons who did not take advantage of dialogue and open door policy by my Customs Area Controller to achieve Ease of Doing Business.
“We have dedicated phone lines to address all issues and resolve disputes and we urge anyone with any matter to come forward with them” he said.
Ejesieme also disclosed that the command have been able to resolve more than 650 cases of trade disputes in recent times
