The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has insisted on the imposition of excise duties on carbonated drinks to improve its revenue generation.
The Comptroller-General of Customs, Hameed Ali, who stated this while speaking at a public hearing on the 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) in Abuja on Wednesday, said Customs revenue generation was predicated on market forces that drive imports to Nigeria.
He said the payment of excise duties should not be imposed on imported carbonated drinks alone but also on locally manufactured ones.
Ali said at present, NCS is authorised to collect was excise duties only on tobacco and alcoholic beverages.
Ali attributed the inability of the NCS to meet its revenue generation target to smuggling at the various boarders, saying that smuggling had become a way of life for some people. He, however, said the NCS had put in place structures to curtail smuggling.
He said NCS was on the verge of deploying three scanners at the seaports in the country “for proper and speedy examination of containers entering the country”.
He, however, failed to address the issue of all the scanners purchased by former Destination Inspection service providers and taken over by the Nigeria Customs Service but which Customs officials have left to rot away.
“The border communities do not want to cooperate in fighting smuggling because of absence of government in their communities. Sometimes they cooperate with the smugglers because of the support they receive from the smugglers,” he said.
The Customs CG said the service generated N1.5trillion in 2020, while N1.02trillion has been generated in first six months of 2021.
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