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By Steve Agbota
Cost of cargo clearance and price of goods in the local market is expected to drop drastically as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), over the weekend put the Customs and official market exchange rate at par.
The reduction now put Customs exchange rate for computing import duty and the official market rate at N1,251/$1.
It was reported that the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), the nation’s official window, the naira closed at N1,251/$1 last Friday.
The reduction is coming after importers and clearing agents operating at the nation’s seaports complained that Customs exchange rate rises was higher than official foreign exchange market rate of the naira and the US dollar.
It was further gathered that Customs exchange rate on the Nigerian trade hub portal revealed that the rate for cargo clearance has reduced from N1,260.49 to N1,251/$1.
To this end, importers that opened Form M last Wednesday, will pay less to clear their cargoes as import duties are benchmarked against the dollar.
Also, importers will open Form M at a lower rate compared to those who opened Form M last week Friday, which is April 5, 2024 according to the apex bank’s new directive to Customs to use the rate on the date of submitting Form M for calculating import duties.
Flowing the reduction, importers and clearing agents operating across the nation’s Port are optimistic that more imports will come into the nation’s ports and there will be more job to do.
An expert, Quadri Keshinro who spoke with Daily Sun said that there was still the need to slash the
Customs exchange rate for computing import duty and the official market rate.
“In our letter to the Federal Government and Ministry of Finance, we made it clear that our official rate is one of the highest in the world. We told them to benchmark Customs exchange rate for computing import duty at N800/$1 even less. This will encourage importers to do business and crash the price of goods in the country. It is doable.
“The reduction will also boost Customs revenue. We all aware that Federal Government gave Customs over N5 trillion revenue as their annual target. But how can they meet up this target if will have higher rate for import duty? They couldn’t meet up their target last year even when the official exchange rate was not as high as this. So there is need to still bring it down,” he said.
