The Nigerian Cabinet on Wednesday approved the introduction of an Electronic Cargo Tracking Note Scheme for the country.
The Minister of Transportation, Mu’azu Sambo made this to State House Correspondents, while briefing them on decisions reached at the cabinet meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“Council considered our submission and approved our submission to put in place for Nigeria as it is in 26 other African countries, an Electronic Cargo Tracking Note Scheme in order to among other things take care of under declaration at Ports, secure our imports and exports and provide transparency in cargo invoicing and declarations.”
Sambo further disclosed that the scheme, when fully implemented, can raise the revenue profile of Nigeria to about $ 90-235 million per annum.
“The implementation of the scheme will abet the problems of under-declaration, concealment and wrong classification of cargo, which are the primary causes of revenue leakages, insecurity and general security issues at the borders.
“The deployment and implementation of this state of the art ECT scheme will ensure the elimination of loopholes on border operations and boost the revenue of the Nigerian government in form of duties, Port charges and levies.
“It is expected that this scheme will generate revenues to the Nigerian government ranging from about $(0 million per annum to a peak of about $235 million per annum.”
The Transport Minister said the proposed electronic platform would be deployed by a consortium of five companies made up of a foreign technical partner and four local companies at no cost to the Nigerian government.
PIAK
