…Says manufacturers to lay-off 30,000 workers

Transparency Awareness Group, (TANGO), Tuesday wrote to President Muhammadu Buhari, saying that importers have allegedly lost about N110billion within the last one month due to their inability to clear their consignments at the ports.

The group asked Buhari to probe into the circumstances that led to the huge loss of revenue.

TANGO in a letter of protest addressed also to the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, signed by its national coordinator, Mr. Frank Nzeogwu, raised alarm over the imminent collapse of the nation’s economy.

The group also alleged that about 30,000 jobs may soon be lost to the ugly situation if not quickly arrested.

According to the letter, ” At the moment, there is huge backlog of consigments meant to boost the nation’s production capacities in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic stocked at the nation’s port. Importers have lost about N10billion to demurrage charges while the Customs Service and other government agencies have lost about N100billion to duty and other essential charges in the last two months.

“Federal Government has in its 2019 fiscal policy measures approved zero percent import duty to all machines and equipments for Agricultural, Cement, Iron and Steel (Cold Roll) and Aviation am9ng others.

“Hitherto to the introduction of automation of import duty exemption certificate (IDEC) platform, the investors used to clear their consignments of machineries without any problems but for the past three months everything changed with the introduction of IDEC platform.

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“The investors could not clear their goods using this IDEC platform because the fiscal policy measures were not captured in platform making impossible to assess.  While the former code used for such sectoral concessions was disengaged with the introduction of IDEC platform. Fiscal policy measures are not exemption but concessions introduced by Government to trigger growth in some sectors of the economy.”

“This complaint becomes pertinent due to the fact that nations of the world are currently adopting holistic economic policies capable of overhauling the revenue drive, improve socioeconomic as well as infrastructural development in quick response to the urgent need for ease-of -doing business mechanism occasioned by the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic globally and Nigeria is not an exemption.

“This is a great sabotage against the federal government especially the economic advisory team, the Minister for Finance, Hajia Zainab Ahmed, the Minister for Industry, Trade and Investments, Otunba Niyi Adebayo as well as the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele despite their efforts towards stimulating the nation’s economy.

“If this ugly situation persists, importers’ deliverables to manufacturers would be affected which may eventually translate into shutdown of industries thereby leading to loss of jobs by over 30,000 Nigerians. We urge the government to quickly arrest the current situation in the collective interest of the nation.”

Vanguard