Area Controller, Apapa command of the Nigeria Customs Service, Comptroller Willy Egbudin has said that the command collected N240.7 billion between January and October 2016.
Egbudin who gave the figure while briefing the senate committee on Customs and Excise on the revenue performance of the command in Lagos on Thursday said the amount collected represents 75 percent of the total collection of the command’s annual target of N33.84 billion.
Egbudin told the senators who were at the command on an investigative oversight that despite the downturn in import volume, the command has made significant improvement in its revenue performance, a feat he attributed to strict adherence to procedures.
“The command has an annual target of 33.84billion which translate to 32billion monthly. Without mincing words, I will say the command has performed creditably well in the face of economic down turn that the country is facing today. We are able to do this because of our strict adherence to procedures and ways of doing business in Nigeria.
“We have been doing our best to ensure that the core functions of Customs are carried out accordingly,” he said.
On the command’s anti smuggling effort, he said the command seized 23 import containers with a Duty Paid Value of over N600million and 30 export containers of wood which were not allowed to be exported out of the country.
He told the visiting senators that one of the major challenge faced by the command is not having functional scanners at the ports even as he appealed to the government to help procure new scanning machines at the ports.
He said the challenges if addressed will help the command realize more revenue.
“The command has about three scanning machines. Out of these three, two are not functioning and the one that is functioning break down from time to time and this of course is not helping in terms of revenue collection.
If government can help in putting the scanning machines in order or provide new ones entirely, I think the performance of the command will be better than what we have done so far,” he said.
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