The Nigeria Customs Service, Federal Road Safety Corps and the Federal Inland Revenue Service have partnered on a project to ensure that all vehicles imported into Nigeria paid duties before registration to shore up revenue of the country.

The Customs Public Relations Officer, Mr Wale Adeniyi, said on Wednesday in Abuja that the objective of the collaboration was to shore up the revenue base of the country and stop vehicle smuggling.

He said that the meeting of the heads of the agencies was to fashion out the modalities to achieve the implementation of the project.

According to him, the collaboration is in response to the directive Mr President gave that government agencies should think out of the box to enhance the revenue base of the country.

He said, “This project involves high level collaboration among the three agencies to ensure that no vehicle will be registered unless verification of duty payment is made.

“There will be one shop verification facilities, officers who will be deployed to state licence offices.

These officers will be able to check the system and confirm payment before such applicants are directed to the licensing authority for vehicle registration.

He said, “It is also part of this collaboration that every importer will be made to produce the Tax Identification Numbers before they can conduct any business with customs.

“FIRS will equip us with the knowledge to be able to access their system and be able to determine whether these are responsible individuals and corporate citizens before they can conduct business with customs.

“The collaboration is going to mutually benefit the relationship among all the agencies.”

Adeniyi said the effective implementation of the project was that the heads of the agencies had resolved to set up two technical committees.

He added that one of the committees would work on the ICT interface of the agencies

He said that the other committee would draft the Standard Operative Procedure for deployment of officers to the state tax offices where registration of vehicles would take place.

Adeniyi said that a lot of training and sensitisation would be involved in the collaboration process.

According to him, in the short run, customs officers will go to FRSC that will train and equip them with the skills that will be necessary to actualise the collaboration.

He said that in the long run, both agencies agreed that a training module would be introduced in their different training schools that would allow customs officers to be trained by FRSC officials’ vice-versa.

Adeniyi said that the modules of the training would be incorporated into the curriculum of the academy of both institutions.

He said, “Some progress has been made before now but we expect that these committees will come up with recommendations that will allow the agencies to build on the existing progress so that we can get to the level of full integration between customs and FRSC.

“It is our intention to spell out specifically what customs officers will be doing, what their job descriptions will be and what will be the limit of their power so that there will be no excesses.

“We will not create an opportunity for malpractices.

“This is why the three agencies felt the need to define SOP to be issued and this will be circulated widely and particularly to the offices of the state tax board.

“The three agencies have already demonstrated commitment to this project and they have shown that they have absolute confidence in the sustainability of the project.”

Adeniyi said that government had earlier tasked MDAs to think out of the box in coming up with measures that would improve and increase revenue of the nation.

He said, “And these openings in fact show that 70 per cent of vehicles that come into the country get fake registration certificate.

“These vehicles are smuggled into the country and they do not pay duty on them and yet they are able to register, so that is a gap.

“Also these agencies believe that if they collaborate, they can close the gap and shut them out of registration.”

 

Source: Punchng.com

Comments

comments