FG loses N1trillion to Import Duty Waivers Request Yearly – Minister
From Godwin Obi, Lagos
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The Federal government says it conceded about N1trillion
through grants of various import waivers to both public and private organizations
between 2011 and 2015.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Finance, Budget and
National Planning, Hajia, Zainab Ahmed on Friday at stakeholders’ meeting for
the introduction of E-Solution for the Administration of Import Duty Waivers at
the ministry headquarters.
She also said that the ministry on annual basis receives
over 600,000 requests for import duty waivers from government agencies, the
private sector and non-government organizations.
The E-Solution is a deployment of an automated Custom Duty Portal
that will be used in the management of Customs Import Duty Exemption
Management, IDEC.
The initiative is the brainchild of the ministry of finance,
budget and National Planning and when the system is fully operational, it will
improve efficiency in service delivery, improve revenue drive leading to
increase in revenue generation and would officially commence operation in the
first quarter of 2020.
The ministry said the hitherto manually operating system
which gives room for manipulations and leakages in revenue generation processes
will be eliminated.
The Minister said the initiative is one of the President
Mohammadu Buhari’s giant strides and administrative ingenuity and that the
project is in line with the priorities of the federal government aimed at
creating employment, reducing poverty, stimulating the micro-economic
environment for sustainable growth and development.
‘‘Despite revenue losses due to manual processing, she said
multiple use of IDEC approvals, delay in processing applications, indiscriminate
allocations and subjectivity in the appropriate process have remained a major
constraint in the monitoring, evaluation and standardizing the process of
granting waivers and certificates.
‘‘In order to address these challenges, the ministry has keyed
into the priority programmes of this administration, embark on reforming the
processes, which involves re-engineering the processes from application to
issuance and validations by the Nigerian Customs Service, to be powered by
digital technology,’’ she explained.
Recall that the Federal Executive Council, FEC recently
approved this project and it is expected that the implementation will be
pursued vigorously in the first quarter of 2020.
In view of this, the minister reiterated the commitment to
work with all stakeholders in order to deliver the needed incentives to allow
economic activities to grow.
According to her, the stakeholders’ meeting was aimed at
sensitizing stakeholder and to have a common ground and understanding so that
at the end the outcome will be binding on all stakeholders.
She said the re-engineering of the IDEC process is expected
to aid the Ease of Doing Business in Nigeria and urged stakeholders to take
advantage of the IDEC reform and ensure seamless service delivery.
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