Reps probe Finance Ministry’s import duty waiver grants
Our Reporter December 27, 2013 1 Comment »

By UCHE USIM

The House of Representatives has directed the Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to furnish it with the amount of money lost to import duty waivers granted by her office between 2011 and 2013.
Aside the revenue loss, she is also to provide the full names of the beneficiaries; what the waivers were tied to and the justification for granting such duty exemptions.

The directive contained in a 50-question letter on ‘state of the economy’, sprang from the undulating rhythm in the revenue of various commands of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the nation’s dwindling non-oil revenues, which have robbed her of huge income.

Before now, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on House Services, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, had lamented that aside the airlines and other critical service providers, some individuals got as much as N150 billion waivers to import certain goods.

In the current complaint, the House Committee on Finance, was worried over the drop in revenue generation as a result of poor policies implementation by the Finance Minister. The question on waivers was number 15 on the list, where the committee asked, “How much exactly did the government lose in revenue as a result of import duty waivers in 2011, 2012 and 2013? “In your opinion as the Minister of Finance, who oversees the economy, what are the implications of this to the country’s economy? What efforts have you made to stop this waiver policy, which is distorting the economy? “Our non-oil income has dropped in 2013, a case where increased tariffs on various items effectively reduced importation to zero in some sectors.

“However, those items now find their way into Nigeria through our borders. Does it make any sense to increase these tariffs when we have such porous borders? As an example, officially, Togo imported more rice this year than Nigeria”, the committee queried.

Question 16 of the 50-question letter directs the Minister to explain why the Federal Inland Revenue Service is planning to engage foreign consultants to collect tax for the agency, beginning from 2014.

Meanwhile fears are rife that the N1.4 trillion revenue target set for the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) in 2013 may not be realized as more and more individuals, companies and corporations continued to swell the list of beneficiaries enjoying Federal Government’s waivers and concessions on the goods imported into the country.
Stakeholders also insist that the waiver policy was discriminatory and not well-defined for the citizenry to understand the objective of the government.

http://sunnewsonline.com/new/cover/reps-probe-finance-ministrys-import-duty-waiver-grants/