The Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, has reported that it generated a total sum of N976.6 billion intothe Federation Account between January and August 2020.
The disclosure, which was made public in a document released by the Service’s Public Relations Office, indicated that the larger chunks of the revenue collected were from import duty and Value Added Tax (VAT) charges.
A further breakdown of the revenue collections showed that the revenue-collection agency raked in N471.7 billion from import duty, N216.4 billion from the Customs’ VAT, N120.4 billion from non-federation accounts levies, N84.3 billion from federation accounts levies, N76.9 billion from excise duty and N6.6 billion from fees.
With the N976.6 billion revenue collection in six months of the fiscal year, there are strong indications that the Service will surpass its revenue target this year and the sum of N1.3 trillion it generated in 2019. The 2019 revenue collected was about N404 billion over its projected N937 billion target for the year.
This is even as the Comptroller-General of NCS, Mr. Hameed Ali (rtd), has assured that the Service would generate huge revenue this year in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the economy.
On the half year revenue performance, Ali commended his officers and men for their resilience and commitment to duty during the peak period of coronavirus spread.
He enthused: “Nigeria and indeed the world have been challenged with COVID-19, but we are still doing our best, there is no cause for alarm in terms of revenue generation.”
Analysts believe that the agency could triple in revenue generation if the current automation project being implemented by the government to make goods clearing and payment systems more transparent across the sea and land borders in the country.
Recently, the Federal Government approved $3.1 billion for the automation of customs operations.
