Apapa customs records N19bn revenue in March

The Apapa Area Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) said it collected over N19 billion revenue into the federation and non-federation account in March.

ASYCUDA Project Manager of the command, Yusuf Malanta who disclosed this while speaking with SHIPS& PORTS DAILY in his office on Tuesday said although the amount generated is a far cry from the command’s monthly target of N36 billion, it is N2 billion higher than the N17 billion collected in February.

Malanta attributed the shortfall in the revenue collection to low importation in the first quarter of the year, the hike in import duty on rice to 110 percent by the federal government as well as the challenges encountered during the transition period.

“The moment a new year starts, there is always a decline in importation coupled with the fact that we are on transition. In every transition, there are some people who are rebellious, who don’t like to accept changes and they go around confusing other people not to accept the changes but we have to overpower them and the third factor is the government fiscal policy on rice,” he said.

He said the PAAR regime will translate to higher revenue for the command when importation is high even as he noted that the level of compliance to the PAAR regime by traders has increased at the command compared to other commands.

He expressed optimism that with a change of attitude by traders who have accepted and are ready to make the PAAR regime work, the command will meet its target before the end of the year.

“The PAAR works on importation. If there is no importation and declaration, how can the PAAR work? Apapa has compliant traders than other ports. We try to contend with the hiccups of PAAR and good enough people who are ready to change in terms of trade and attitude are complying. So by this month, we are thinking of generating N25 billion and by the end of June we should be around N36 billion,” he said.