N1trn conceded to import waivers in 5 years, says FG

The federal government says it conceded about N1trillion through grants of various import waivers to both public and private organisations between 2011 and 2015.

This was disclosed by Hajia, Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, budget and national planning, on Friday at a stakeholders’ meeting for the introduction of E-Solution for the administration of import duty waivers at the ministry headquarters.

She also said that ministry on annual basis receives over 600,000 requests for import duty waivers from government agencies, the private sector and non-government organisations.

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 brain child 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 be 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 Muhammadu Buhari’s giant strides which is in line with the priorities of the federal government aimed at creating employment, reducing poverty, stimulating 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 standardising 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 reengineering the processes from application to issuance and validations by the Nigerian Custom Service, to be powered by a digital technology,’’ she explained.