Customs seizes goods with N41.322b duty paid value

Between 2009 and last year, a total of 34,485 seizures were  made with duty paid value of N41.322 billion, the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) has said.

A Deputy Comptroller-General of the NCS Tahir Musa, who made this known yesterday during a meeting between the NCS and textile value chain stakeholders at the NCS Command and Staff College, Gwagwalada, Abuja, said  the figure excludes recent seizures from Kano and the ones that were made over the weekend.

Presenting a paper titled,  ‘Customs Anti-Smuggling Strategy: Issues and Challenges,’ he said the Federal Government is now paying attention to the revenue generated by the NCS following the global fall in government revenue as a result of the more than 50 per cent drop in oil prices. He said the Customs is next to the oil and gas sector in terms of revenue generation in Nigeria.

Musa said: “Over this weekend the federal operation in Lagos zone seized more than 10,000 bags of rice on the Badagary boarders. The western marine also detected a vessel that was carrying over 2,000 bags.”

According to him, the government has a high expectation from the service in order to ensure economic and national growth.

He said: “A lot is expected of the NCS to ensure the sustenance of economy. One of the prominent role of the NCS is the generation of revenue, which is only second to the revenue generated from oil.”

He described smuggling as an act of illegal importation or exportation into or out of the country without payment of duty and evasion of prohibition and restriction  order without legal document required for that purpose.

Musa said smuggling encompasses false declaration, concealments, willful under-payment of customs duty, under-invoicing, over-invoicing, trafficking in prohibited or restricted goods.

He said owing to the challenges that local manufacturers face, most of the goods are imported into the country by smugglers.

Musa blamed smuggling on the preference for cheap imported goods, regretting that some companies that were booming in the past have gone down.

The NCS, he said, has put  strategies in place to curb the menace of smuggling  with  reform measures.

He said the Customs was able to convince the Federal Government to approve the  purchase of AK-47 and commando riffle to prosecute the anti-smuggling war, adding that no other agency has ever bought arms from the United States (U,S).

He said:“The NCS has just acquired two high speed patrol boats that have the capacity to carry 30 men on board and has the endurance of two week in the high sea.”

The post Customs seizes goods with N41.322b duty paid value appeared first on The Nation.

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