How $3.1billion e-Customs Contract Would Stop Multiple Alerts on Cargoes—–Spokesman

By DAPO OLAWUNI

National Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Customs Service, Deputy Comptroller Timi Bomodi has allay fears of stakeholders on the newly signed $3.1billion e-Customs Contract, saying that when it comes on stream, challenges of alerts on cargoes would come to an end.

He also revealed that with this new system, examinations and release of import and export cargoes will be subjected to live feeds across multiple platforms.

He assured that this will check arbitrary decision making at all levels and will also guide against uneccessary interventions by officers.

The $3.2 billion e-Customs project is to be financed by the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and managed by a Chinese firm; Huawei Technologies Limited under a 20-year concession window.

The customs spokesman debunked insinuations among stakeholders that revenue functions of the customs have been ceded out to a private firm.

According to him, the concession agreement only covers the provision of modernization/ICT infrastructures for the Nigeria Customs.

“You are aware that the Service has been working with Webb Fontaine as technical partners from the ASYCUDA era to NICIS. As technical partners all they did was manage our ICT infrastructure whose operationality was focussed on enhancing UI & UX on imports/exports.

“As efficient as NICIS II is, it still has limitations. We complain about alerts and serial interventions on going transactions because we have a less than efficient audit mechanism.

“With this system examinations and release of import/exports will be subjected to live feeds across multiple platforms. This will check arbitrary decision making at all levels and will guide interventions.

“Many aspects of the Customs job are still not automated. A classic example is escort operations for goods in transit. Today because of a shortfall in manpower, requests for escort takes quite a while before approval.

“This causes delays in the delivery of transit containers. With an automated e-tracking system the delays will be things of the past. Ditto for border management and control. Ditto for interface with other govt agencies. We are moving into an era of high efficiency which can only be technology enabled” he said

Going further, DC Bomodi said that excise operations in the service before now have been mostly analogue. He however assured that the new customs contract will see to the upscaling of all excise monitoring activities and bring them up to par with what happens on the import and export side.

“The infrastructure needed for this exercise is indeed massive. Connecting factories across the country and creating a single monitoring system checking daily production is a herculean task.

“Same for the added responsibility of monitoring taxes on newer more sophisticated platforms like telecom operations. Only companies like Huawei can provide the technological backbone for this ambitious project.

“Customs operations far exceeds port operations. They are complex and ever evolving especially today” he said

DC Bomodi noted that Trade Modernization Projects Limited, an indigenous company are the major concessionaire in the project, while Huawei is just a technical partner.

DAILY TREND recalls that the Comptroller-General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) who signed the new contract in Abuja last week, had explained that the NCS would generate a whopping revenue of $176 billion over the next 20 years through the implementation of e-customs project.

Ali reportedly said the e-Customs concession project would ease the cost of doing business, boost revenue, enhance productivity and stop every arbitrariness in the service.

He said: “The $3.2 billion e-Customs project to be financed by the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and managed by Huawei Technologies Limited under a 20-year concession window, when fully implemented, would quadruple Customs’ current N210 billion monthly revenue collection.”