The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has attributed the recent delays observed by port users in the approval of Form M’s and Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) to its internal auditing of Fast-Track beneficiaries.
Customs revealed this in a press release signed by its National Public Relations Officer, Mr. Joseph Attah on Monday.
The release read; “NCS wishes to explain 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 in the interest of Stakeholders.
“The delay being experienced in the process of Form ‘M’ and PAAR now 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”
Recall that the timelines for approval of Form ‘M’ and issuance of PAAR were approved by the Customs Comptroller-General, Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd) 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.
The Service craved the understanding of stakeholders in the on-going effort to improve, assuring the public of its determination to make Import and Export processes better.
Customs also said the system will continue to uphold the timelines and facilitate the timely process of all Imports and Exports in line with Federal Government effort to make Nigeria an investment destination.
