Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) is on course to beat the previous year revenue figures as it generated N976.6 billion between January and August 2020.
A document released from the service through its Public Relations Office on Thursday indicated that the service generated its highest revenue from import duty followed by charges from Value Added Tax (VAT).
From the document, NCS said it realised N471.7 billion from import duty trailed by the N216.4 billion generated from the Customs’ VAT.
According to the statistics, the sum of N120.4 billion was generated from non-federation accounts levies, while N84.3 billion was from federation accounts levies.
The document also showed that the sum of N76.9 billion was generated from excise duty and N6.6 billion was received from fees.
All these cumulated to N976.6 billion, which showed that it was on course to beat the sum of N1.3 trillion that was generated as revenue in 2019. In 2019, the agency gave itself a target of N937 billion but it exceeded it by N404 billion.
This year, the NCS is targeting to generate N1.68 trillion and from all indications, this may be met and surpassed in the remaining four months despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has impacted negatively on the economy.
The Comptroller-General of NCS, Mr Hameed Ali, assured the country of generating substantial revenue in spite of the pandemic.
Mr Ali gave this assurance while commending his officers and men for their resilience and commitment to duty during the challenging period of coronavirus.
“Nigeria and indeed the world have been challenged with COVID-19, but we are still doing our best, there is no cause for alarm in terms of revenue generation,” Mr Ali said.
Recently, the federal government approved $3.1 billion for the automation of the customs’ operations.
The project will be funded through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP). The aim is to automate all parts of the customs business (end-to-end) and fully institutionalize the use of advanced technologies to boost the functions of the NCS.
This will bring immense value to the country – particularly in the area of revenue generation.
The e-custom modernization will lead to improvements in clearance efficiency, facilitate trade as well as boost the confidence of all stakeholders. As a result, revenue generated by the NCS is expected to increase exponentially to N66.9 trillion over a 20-year period, which will see it generate more than N3.3 trillion annually.
This means the customs office will generate more than its previous revenue as leakages due to human intervention will be minimized.
