By Steve Agbota
The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has concluded plans to give Nigeria Customs Service the necessary support to realise its over N5 trillion revenue target for the year 2024.
Vice President of ANLCA, Prince Segun Oduntan gave the assurance while chatting with maritime correspondent at the association’s national secretariat during the weekend, said the association will help the Service to achieve its target.
However, he expressed confidence in the Comptroller-General of Customs, Wale Adeniyi, saying that he has the capacity to deliver.
“He has been talking to his officers, we can see a renew Customs now, people are happy doing the work and we agents have been talking to our people that it is better to be compliant than for us to be paying one levy or fine.
“We have found out that there is no point, if you are supposed to pay a duty of N3 million for instance, and you went and pay N1.6m, your are given a Debit Note and the penalty of 25 per of that amount, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s better to be compliant from the onset, that will give you peace of mind of a fruitful day at work,” he said.
Meanwhile, he urged the Federal Government and its regulatory agencies to pay more attention to creating incentives such as export grants and others that can be given to people doing export.
He also lamented that the way the port system environment is currently operated does not encourage export activities, adding that cargoes that are loaded with export goods find it difficult to enter into the ports for weeks due to poor regulation.
He also urged its members to embrace exportation in 2024, in order to generate foreign exchange in order to help cushion the continuous depreciation of the Naira currency against the US Dollar.
On his expectations for year 2024, he said: “Our expectations are for the Naira to gain against the US dollars, we are encouraging our people to embrace export trade. Some of them are already going into agriculture so they can be exporting the proceeds.
“This will enable us to backup government efforts in shoring up our Naira currency. We are also encouraging our members to be compliant with government regulations. With our compliance, we would be able to dialogue with the government agencies and they will in turn listen to us.
“There are incentives such as export grants and others that can be given to people doing export, the other thing is the port system environment, cargoes that are loaded with export goods find it difficult to enter our ports for weeks which is not suppose to be,” he said.
He hinted that in as much as many clearing agents are now embracing exportation, the major challenge is that export containers find it difficult getting to their final destination thereby making the economy to loose foreign exchange.