Lagos — The Nigeria Customs Service yesterday flagged off a new regime of cargo clearance at the nation's ports and border posts.

The new clearance regime, according to the Comptroller-General, Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko, was introduced in order to maximize revenue collection, boost transparency and speedy clearance of goods.

The new cargo clearance procedure is already undergoing pilot test at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, where, according to the CGC's office, it has reduced the clearing time by 40 per cent, doubled assessed entries and doubled collectable revenue by 200 per cent.

The clearing regime it was further learnt, also emphasizes an up-front payment of import duty, so as to ensure that importers could evacuate their cargo on arrival, with a multiplier effect on total prevention of port congestion.

The new regime which has the advantage of drastically reducing the controversial auctioning of imported goods by customs, essentially allows pre-clearance ahead of the arrival of the goods, based on the importers declaration, thereby enabling the Service to raise Demand Notices (DN), in the event of discrepancies in the declarations made by the importers or agents.

Abdullahi embarked on the new initiative as a result of increasing pressure to plug all revenue loopholes, after being faced with government's 2009 revenue target of N650 billion for the service, half of which the agency is struggling to meet, even as the time is running to an end.

The new clearance regime has been lauded by freight forwarders and clearing agents. The chairman, board of trustees of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), said the regime will drastically reduce the chances of their principals' goods being unduly impounded and auctioned as overtime cargoes.

Meanwhile, a new Customs Duty Payment Investigation Team headed by Deputy Comptroller Bello Liman has been set up by the Service, bringing the number to two. With the other team headed by Hassan Mundu, also a deputy comptroller, the team will hunt down and expose duty evaders and recover from them whatever duty they must have deprived the federal government.

The teams are expected to begin their onslaught this week. "The Comptroller General has also given them the mandate to take on any duty evader in the society, no matter their statuses or connections," said the Customs image-maker, Assistant Comptroller Wale Adeniyi, noting that the Hassan Mundu team would now shift its operational base to the Port Harcourt area, while the Bello Liman team would take over the Lagos axis, from where the Mundu group stopped.

The Committees' target this time he explained will be the hundreds of unpaid assessments inside the Customs ASYCUDA Systems, especially the fake payment receipts, and the manual payments made under the e-payment regime and the use of wrong procedures to evade duty payment.