Freight Agents To Stage Protest At PTML Command  Over Customs Hike Of Vehicles Valuation

The N4.1trillion target set aside by the federal government for the Nigeria Customs Service and the newly introduced Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) Valuation System which was introduced by the service in January 2022, have continued to attract negative effects, as licensed customs agents and freight forwarders are set to pickett the PTML Command over recent hike in valuation of imported vehicles, DAILY FOCUS NIGERIA has learnt.

 

 

 

The protest which is expected to commence on Wednesday,  February 16th 2022 is to draw the attention of the government to find solutions on how to reduce values imposed by the customs on imported vehicles.

 

According to the freight agents , values on fairly used imported vehicles  increased by 200% because of the recent target set aside by the government for the service.

 

It was gathered that vehicles that was cleared with  N500, 000 as surface charge now cost N1.1m ; while those cleared with N250,000 now cost N600, 000 while those cleared  with N350,000 now N850,000 .

 

They also accused officers and men of the service of at the ports of been overzealous in the revenue  drive since government announcement of the year’s target even as they  called on government not to impose any form of  target for the service adding that it would further lead to high cost of cargo clearance for the seaports.

 

Remilekun, Saliu Sikiru, Youth Representatives of freight practitioners at Tin Can Island Port, in a chat on Wednesday said ”We have been having issues with obtaining valuation since last week just because the Nigeria customs wants to increase duty, since they  had a meeting in Abuja.

 

“The Nigeria customs service initially plans to implement e-invoicing on the 1st of February which was suspended by the house of assembly till further notice,  the Fed Govt gave a target of N4.1trillion to the Nigeria customs for the year 2022 which by all means they must meet the targeted amount.

 

He alleged that “So by this means, the all assistant controller (AC) of the  Nigeria customs held a meeting that all jobs must be pending, which takes 2 days before they could ask us to proceed with collection of valuation.

 

“Values of vehicles now triple to what we have been collecting before in all the terminals under Tin Can command, but it’s only Tin Can that have proceed for collection, PTML (Grimaldi), Classic terminal 2 and 3 (Tedi) are still on hold base on the high value.

 

“You can imagine vehicles we do collect for 500k as surface now 1.1m now, 250k now 600k, 350k now 850 can you imagine?

 

“I fear the future of this our field as importations under the vehicular imports has drop 40% since the last one year base on increment of duty on every 3months in a year.

 

‘ Importers who import up to 10 to 13 vehicles in a month’s now struggle to bring in 5 or 4 in a month because of lack of sales thereafter.

 

“So we plead to all the associations associated under customs broker and freight forwarders to stand up on this case because demurrages are piling up at the detriment of the agents…

 

 

“A lots of complains has been in place which non of them has been look into or checked.”

 

Meanwhile , Spokesman for the PTML Command of the service, Mr Muhammed Yakubu did not pick the telephone calls put across for responses.