By Abdullahi Mohammed, Abuja
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) Wednesday approved the introduction of an Electronic Cargo Tracking Note Scheme for the country.Minister of Transportation, Mu’azu Sambo, said this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the weekly FEC 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,” he said.
He said the scheme, when fully implemented, would raise the revenue profile of Nigeria between $90 and $235 million per anum.“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 anum to a peak of about $235 million per anum,” he said.
The 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 .