By Joy Okoli
The Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has said about N6b is lost on a daily basis due to the systems failure in the Standard Organisation of Nigeria’s (SON) ports facility.
Addressing members of the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN) at the International Maritime Press Centre in Apapa Lagos, Vice President of ANLCA, Dr. Kayode Farinto lamented that in the last two months, “my members are facing challenges operating without PAAR and they have been paying huge demurrage for a problem that is not their fault. Any regulated item by SON must have SONCAP certificate.
“There are three procedures for getting this certificate, ideally you are supposed to get your SONCAP offshore, but where you do not get, there is a small window here that is called ‘default’ or ‘import permit’
This was actually created for the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria to ease their consignment clearance at the port”
“If you have your SONCAP, there is what we call product certificate for form M and SON Code, it is the SON Code that you put into the Customs trade hub for you to generate SONCAP, if you don’t have it, the Nigeria Customs Service would not treat such consignment and they would not issue you PAAR. If this continues, I will encourage freight forwarders to go to court because we are losing millions of Naira on daily basis.
“When I called the SON DG, he did not pick, so I sent a text to him about what is happening to SONCAP, but up till now, nothing has been done”.
“The SONCAP is a document that has serial number, I am of the opinion that whenever such serial number is imputed in the system, it should synchronize immediately into the Nigeria Customs Service system for them to see that you have SONCAP so they can issue your PAAR, but this never happened”
However, the SON has denied the accusation.
