From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives Committee on Customs, on Tuesday, grilled the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Customs Service ( NCS) over congestions at the various ports across the country.
The committee posited that the congestion at the ports is frustrating the ease of doing business and denying the country of revenue.
The chairman of the Committee, Leke Abejide, while speaking an interactive session between lawmakers and key players at the port, decried the long processes involved in clearing cargoes at the ports.
Abejide explained that the interactive session was organized to proffer lasting solutions to congestions at the ports, so as to make them more competitive.
According to him, “bonded containers that are supposed to be dropped at sea side by the shipping lines are not being allocated to another Bonded Terminals together with other containers for the said Bonded Terminals to take the whole vessel loads to its Terminal first on the cost of the importers before the Bonded Terminal which is the final destination pick the container to their Terminal.
“Apart from the cost which is abnormal and triple, there is time consumption which lead to delays make nonsense of the FGN policy of Ease of Doing Business.
“Shippers Council in today’s meeting should tell us what it is doing to monitor the excesses of all the Shipping Lines in trying to kill the Export business by leaving Export full containers at the Ports and load empty containers for juicy import freight that are in the range of $17,000 per container when they know that import is a leakage to the economy while export is an injection into the economy.
“NPA should equally tell us why the Terminal Operators are allowed to give fewer free days, like 5 days, for Export to Gate-in knowing fully well that in advanced countries there are in some cases 21 free days.
“Nigeria Customs Service should tell us why they cannot trust their well organized Commands that have Area Controllers, Deputy Controllers Admin, D/C Revenue, DC Enforcement, many Assistant Controllers with containers going to Bonded Terminals unless cumbersome clearing procedures are done when in actual fact the same clearing procedures will be done at final destination with full Customs organs present and other Agencies such as SS, Police Antibomb, SON, NAFDAC etc.”