‘Manual inspection of cargo to stall gains of single window for cargo clearance’
Current physical and manual examination of consignments by officials of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and other agencies of government, known to be obsolete and time consuming, will stall the expected gains of establishing a Single Interface for cargo clearance, popularly known as Single Window, as directed by the new Presidential Executive Orders, stakeholders say.
According to them, shippers can only benefit from the gains of having ‘Single Interface for cargo clearance’ if the Federal Government ensures the management of the NCS restores to operations the multi-billion-naira scanning machines currently out of use at the nation’s seaports and border stations.
These machines have been out of use for over four years since the destination inspection (DI) service providers handed over the scanners to Customs in line with the terms of the seven-year contract entered into with the Federal Government, which ended December 2013.
“Physical examination will stall the 48-hour cargo clearance vision of the Federal Government, which is one of the expected gains of having ‘Single Interface for cargo clearance.’ So, it is critical that scanners are put in place,” Augustine Fischer, general manager, Communication & Sustainability of the APM Terminals Apapa, said in response to BusinessDay questions on role of the terminal in implementing the executive order.
Stating that the port industry believes that having Single Interface together with 24-hour port operations will greatly improve cargo clearance at the port and reduce cost for consumers of port services, Fischer said that the entire system are excited about the new Executive Order issued by the Acting President with respect to efficient port operations.
“APM Terminals Apapa has always operated 24 hours every day and with this directive, government agencies will also work 24 hours and this would be beneficial to the cargo owners as their cargo can be delivered as soon as the vessel arrives the port.
“It would be interesting to see how the clearing agents, freight forwarders, banks and other private organisations that operate within the port adjust their operations to make the 48 hour cargo clearance a reality,” he added.
Tony Anakebe, managing director of Gold-Link Investment Limited, a clearing and forwarding company in Lagos ports, who noted that Customs subjects all the containers coming into the ports to 100 percent physical examination to avert security risk, said that the use of automated clearing system such as scanners has the capacity to detect items like ammunition and other offensive imports.
“Customs documentation and clearance processes have remained the same and largely manual. This poses serious threats to smooth movement of goods and also increase cost of doing business as importers experience man-hour loss over Customs and other government agencies use of manual cargo inspection procedure to examine goods,” he said.
Lucky Amiwero, an industry expert, who noted that having a single interface for cargo clearance will not succeed if it exists on paper alone without government putting structure in place to ensure proper coordination and implementation, said that the federal government needs to set up committee comprising of experts, whose responsibility is to harmonise the operations of agencies at the port.
Amiwero, who identified use of scanning machines as critical to modern and efficient port operations in line with the expected gains of having single interface for cargo clearance, observed the need for the government to critically assess the state of the scanners at the ports for possible repairs.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE