By Ambrose Obioma Okehi (News Emperor)
The inability of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to meet the 2022 revenue target given to the service by Federal Government has somehow became a worrisome development and has equally demoralised the government revenue collection agency.
The development, many alleged has also made the agency not to declare it’s revenue target for the year 2022 nor to publicly say whether it met or surpasses, even fail to meet its revenue target for the year 2022.
This development, News Emperor gathered, may have added to what have added to what industry operators attributed to be the reason for the total silence of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) over the issue and that such may as well have pushed its personnel to deliberately refused to make public its revenue target for 2023 just for the simple reason of its failure to meet the revenue target of 2022.
It could be recalled that the NCS had in January 2022 announced a revenue target of N4.1 trillion for itself, even though the Federal Government had set a target of N3.1 trillion for the service.
Checks however reveals that the Service could not meet either the federal government target or its own target.
Information gotten from our source maintained that the service recorded a shortfall of over N400 billion in the N3.1 trillion target given to it by the federal government, a situation that the Customs Comptroller General (CCG) Col Hameed Ali (rtd) sees as disturbing and blamed it on waivers, fiscal policies, insecurity in the country among others reasons he addused.
Report has it that the service over the years has a tradition of disclosing its revenue target at the beginning of every year, and have always not just neet but always surpasses the target except the 222 target.
Maritime operators and industry watchers are also worried over the development and have equally attributed the whole thing to the harshness of the economy and the insecurity situation of the nation, adding also that the non-disclosure of its revenue target for 2023 to the failure of the service to meet the 2023 target.
Revealing the past revenue performances as recorded by the service, it shows for instance, that the service in 2020 surpassed its revenue target of N1.3 trillion with well over N2 billion. For instance, the NCS recorded a whopping sum of N1,562,115,419,216.32 that year.
However, the agency in 2021 netted the sum of N2.24 trillion revenue into the federal government’s coffers for the year 2021, which represents a 25 per cent increase from the N1.67 trillion target set for the year. The total sum generated also represents a 43.45 per cent increase from N1,562,115,419,216.32 generated in 2020.
Meanwhile, it is worrisome as the agency, in 2022, failed to meet the projected target of N4.1 trillion for the year and has not even declared such to the public.
Some concerned stakeholders have raised eyebrows as they equally observed that with less than few weeks to the end of first quarter of 2023, Customs is yet to make public its revenue projection for the year