Uche Usim, Abuja
Following endless lamentation from frustrated importers and agents at seaports over tardy procedures, the Nigeria Customs Service on Tuesday explained that the current delay in the approval of both Form ‘M’s as well as the issuance of Pre-Arrival Assessment Reports (PAAR) at the PAAR Ruling Centre remain in the best interest of stakeholders.
PAAR and Form M are mandatory requirements needed to execute an import clearance at the port.
The Spokesman of Customs, Joseph Attah in a statement explained that the delay being experienced in the process of Form ‘M’ and PAAR is due to internal auditing of Fast-Track beneficiaries which hitherto made up 20% in order to fish out the non-compliant beneficiaries.
“NCS has now put in place modalities to identify this group of beneficiaries with a bid to removing them from the scheme while compliant ones continue to enjoy the fast track facility.
“Normal speed in process will be restored immediately the backlog accumulated due to this intervention is cleared from the system.
It will be recalled that the timelines for approval of Form ‘M’ and issuance of PAAR were approved by the Customs Comptroller-General, Hameed Ibrahim Ali in April 2018.
“The approval allocated a maximum of 24 hours process time for Form ‘M’ and the issuance of PAAR after the upload of all relevant documents from the duty collecting banks”, he said.
Attah said the Service was determined to uphold the timelines and facilitate the timely process of all imports and exports in line with Federal Government’s effort to make Nigeria an investment destination.