By Abisola THOMPSON
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on Monday explained the current delay in the approval of both Form ‘M’s as well as the issuance of Pre-Arrival Assessment Reports (PAAR) at the PAAR Ruling Centre is in the interest of stakeholders.
It’s Public Relations Officer, Mr. Joseph Attah, in a statement explained: “the delay being experienced in the process of Form ‘M’ and PAAR now is due to internal auditing of Fast-Track beneficiaries, which hitherto made up 20% in order to fish out the non-compliant beneficiaries.
“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.”
According to the statement, the normal speed in process will be restored immediately the backlog accumulated due to this intervention is cleared from the system.
The statement recalled that the timelines for approval of Form ‘M’ and issuance of PAAR were approved by the Customs Comptroller-General, Col. Hameed Ibrahim 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.
“Nigeria Customs Service will continue to uphold the timelines and facilitate the timely process of all Imports and Exports in line with Federal Government 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 determination to make Import and Export processes even better,” the service added.—–The NATION
