Customs clears 64,484 consignments from backlog of un-cleared cargoes

Ten weeks into the implementation of PAAR in the Nigerian ports, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has said it now generates a minimum of 839 Pre-Arrival Assessment Reports (PAAR) on daily basis to enable fast clearance of cargoes at the seaport.

Currently, a total of 27,279 PAARs have so far been generated to enable the clearance of the backlog of un-cleared cargoes at the port estimated at about 99,343. The backlog resulted from the transition from the Risk Assessment Report (RAR) that was formerly issued by Destination Inspection (DI) service providers to the automated clearing procedure, PAAR, currently being issued by Customs.

Yusuf Bashar, the deputy-comptroller of Customs in charge of Information Communication Technology (ICT), who disclosed this to BusinessDay, said that the service inherited 99,343 electronic Form ‘m’, out of which 64,484 forms were converted into the PAAR platform.

“After filtering the initial number of e-forms, Customs discovered that some of them were half importation while others were importations that were still in process,” he said.

“We have registered a total of 35,812 forms into the PAAR platform but banks sent the final documents of 35,041 forms. However, out of the 35,041 final documents that were sent from banks, Customs has granted approval for the clearance of 27,276 forms. As at February 9, Customs has completed 23,000 forms and we are still dealing with the remaining 4,000 forms,” he added.

Explaining further, the Customs boss attributed the delays importers experience from using PAAR platform to wrong description of the importation on the form ‘M’ and currency of the country of origin by banks or importers, wrong identification of country HS-code for tariff, use of wrong language and other issues, which the importers are improving on daily basis.