The Comptroller General of Customs (CGC), Bashir Wale Adeniyi, has said the service can generate well above the N5 trillion revenue bench mark for 2024 if there is quick turnaround business environment.
Speaking at the end of the CGC conference held in Lagos at the weekend, Adeniyi said it is achievable with the support of all stakeholders in the maritime sector, particularly the organised private sector.
The customs boss, who also expressed optimism in the actualization of the 24-hour port operations, however said it is only possible with the full support of all stakeholders and players in the nation’s seaports.
Adeniyi said the service would look at its strategies, processes and procedures that require streamlining to ensure quick turnaround of business and to facilitate trade for the overall interest of the economy.
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He said: “The NCS target for collection in 2024 is N5 trillion but the customs can collect higher than that if Nigeria gets a lot of things right in the fiscal and trade environments.
“24-hour port operation is a conversation that has started between us and all our strategic partners, government agencies, non-government agencies and terminal operators.
“We believe we can achieve 24 hours clearance but we know that customs cannot do it alone even with the best of technology, we will still have to rely on terminal operators to bring down containers to position them for examination.
“We will have to rely on scanners, shipping lines, and trucks to move containers that have been released out of the port.
“If the access roads are not good, and all these other things happening around the ports and borders are not addressed, we might not be able to achieve it. This is why in this conference, we have designated a particular session where we talked to all these stakeholders that are involved and we deliberated on what else we can do to ensure the realization of 24 hours clearance of goods.”
Adeniyi said the NCS would maximize the potential of data that it has on trading, import, export declarations made over time to address a number of areas which it may not have paid attention to in the past.
