By Elizabeth ADENUGA
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), says the present delay in the approval of Form ‘M’ and the issuance of Pre-Arrival Assessment Reports (PAA) at Ruling Centre is in the interest of stakeholders.
Mr Joseph Attah, the Public Relations Officer of the service made the clarification in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday.
Attah explained that the delay being experienced in the process of Form ‘M’ and PAAR was due to internal auditing of Fast-Track beneficiaries as well as to fish out the non-compliant beneficiaries.
According to him, the NCS has now put in place modalities to identify this group of beneficiaries with a bid to removing them from the scheme while compliant ones continue to enjoy the fast-track facility.
“It will be recalled that the timelines for approval of Form ‘M’ and issuance of PAAR were approved by the Customs’ Comptroller-General, Col. Hameed Ali (Rtd) in April 2018.
“ The approval allocated a maximum of 24 hours process time for Form ‘M’ and the issuance of PAAR after the upload of all relevant documents from the duty collecting banks.
“The NCS will continue to uphold the timelines and facilitate the timely process of all Imports and Exports in line with Federal Government’s effort to make Nigeria an investment destination.
“While craving the understanding of our dear stakeholders in the on-going effort to clean the system, please be assured of the Service’s determination to make Import and Export processes even better,’’ he said.
The PAAR system is an online application designed and used by the NCS for the generation of pre-arrival reports.
The NCS receives such e-Form M with other necessary pre-import documents from the Authorised Dealer Bank and carries out preliminary preview using the information provided. —NAN
