The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) said that its multilateral commitment to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) treaties and others within the World Trade Organization (WTO) would take a toll on its revenue base.
Customs National Public Relations Officer, Deputy Comptroller Wale Adeniyi stated this Tuesday at a two-day workshop on ‘Common External Tariff: Implementation, Challenges and Prospects’ organized for maritime reporters by the NCS in Abuja.
Adeniyi said that with such treaties in place, the Nigeria Customs Service would need to review its key performance indicator which is usually measured by the amount of revenue generated within a specific period of time to the development of industries in the country.
He said NCS would no longer measure its output based on revenue generated but will also focus attention on cargo processes at the port.
“All along, it is good when we say we have generated so amount of billions of naira. All along, the matrix that we use is to say that we have target x and we have achieved million x plus y and then everybody believes we have done well. This paradigm is going to shift in the years to come because of situations like this.
“Our multilateral commitment to treaties like ECOWAS to other works within the WTO is going to take a lot of toll on our revenue base. So we have to find other standards for measuring how good we have performed. We are going to be talking on how we are supporting our industries, we are going to be talking about how many industries are operating despite the harsh economic development, we are going to be engaging our stakeholders and be telling them how many graduates we have been able to employ.
“We are going to focus on how long it takes to process declarations and how many do we process in one day, what is the time it takes to discharge goods from vessels and the time it takes to leave the port. These are some of the new matrix we are going to be developing as our key performance indicators not necessarily how much of revenue collected,” he said.
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