Story by Dili Utomi.
The Apapa Command of the Nigeria Customs Service in conformity with the mantra of consolidation, collaboration and innovation as espoused by the Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi on Friday had a training session at the Command’s ICT centre for terminal operators under the Command.
The purpose of the training is to improve the participants knowledge in the area of the valuation of groupage cargoes in other to forestall revenue leakages and to ultimately fulfill the core mandates of trade facilitation, protection of the national economy and revenue generation as provided in the Customs Act 2023.
The term groupage refers to a situation where several importers with small amounts of goods bunch them all up in one container to reduce costs and the wasting of spaces. An example was given of lithium batteries used in the oil and gas sector of the economy which has high value, but of little size and weight, different importers can import a number of units of this battery and put them together in a container with other items from other importers.
The training which was was conducted by Saminu Musa, an officer of the valuation unit was detailed, but also concise and gave all participants-both officers and select terminal operators the opportunity to understand the nature of the valuation methods for groupage cargoes.
Participants spoke with us about the imperativeness of training programmes such as this one and the particular importance of Friday’s training session.
Deputy Comptroller of Customs, Musa M.S. said that “The training affords participants the opportunity to learn how to clear goods on groupage cargoes and that it was a pretty rewarding experience”.
Kingsley Chime, representative of one of the bonded terminals noted that “The training was mainly about the ease of doing business, seamless operations between the stakeholders and the Customs, geared towards trade facilitation and to ultimately plug revenue leakages. There are certain items that are small in volume and weight, but which values can cover the equivalent volume of ten containers of other goods and this knowledge is important”.
The Customs personnel in charge of groupage for the participating terminals is Assistant Comptroller of Customs Idegbesor O.O, she noted that “The training is geared towards teaching the participants how to handle groupage cargoes, the different bills on cargoes, things to look out for and how to transmit their bills of ladding. The participants also learnt how to handle export groupage and I think that from their reactions here that they are quite happy with the training session”.
A lot of Customs Commands seem to be keying very much into the training aspect of the innovations policy of their principal, the CG as the Lagos Free Zone Command, Ibeju-Lekki also a few weeks ago had its own training session for stakeholders. It is hoped that these training sessions will provide improved knowledge for better business practices that should open up the maritime sector for all round growth in the Nigerian economy.
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