By Godwin Oritse

BANKS in the country have decried the backlog of cargo clearance document (Pre Arrival Assessment Report, PAAR) yet to be delivered by the Nigeria Customs Service, a development that has led to high number of un-cleared cargoes at the ports.

Speaking at a meeting organised by the management of the Customs Service, which was also attended by some officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Managing Director of Web Fontaine, Mr. Muktar Ahmed, called on the banks to avail themselves with the training of the new PAAR enhanced system with a view of getting out of the current crisis rocking the port industry.

The banks have said that there is a near crisis situation at the port following the inability of the Customs Service to deliver processed PAAR back to the banks for onward transmission to their importers.

At the meeting tagged ‘CBN-NCS Sensitisation Meeting: Launching of the Enhanced PAAR System’, in Lagos, the bankers noted that banks have become very apprehensive following the unpleasant remarks and treatment they receive from their customers (importers).

Some of the bankers, who spoke to Vanguard, noted that the newly introduced PAAR has put the banks under pressure as more hands had to be employed to meet up with the current challenges they are facing.  They were also of the opinion that with the enhanced PAAR being introduced by the Customs, it means that more people will be engaged.

Moses Omotayo of Wema Bank called on Customs to stop running the newspaper advertisements and Television commercials as they are misleading.

He explained that the notion that cargo can be delivered in 48 hours is very misleading when in actual fact, document leading to the release of these cargoes are stacked for up to two and sometimes four months.

According to Michael Onwujika of Citi Bank, more than 2,000 PAAR documents belonging to various importers are yet to be delivered by the Customs.

Taiwo Egbeyemi of Access Bank stated that there is a crisis situation in the port industry that needs immediate attention, adding that the payment of import duty has become a major challenge occasioned by the current situation.

Ogazi Achiko of Diamond Bank noted that until both the Customs Service and CBN put their acts together, the current crisis will linger on for a long time.

Dickson Simeon of United Bank for Africa (UBA) said that the process of amending cargo clearance document by Customs takes too long, adding that some of these documents could have as much as 70 items waiting to be amended.