The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) generated ₦976.6 billion revenue from January to August. The revenue is mainly from import duties (₦471.7 billion) and Value Added Tax (VAT) (₦216.4 billion).
Despite the economic downtime of the pandemic, the NCS could generate 2019 levels of revenue, which totalled ₦1.3 trillion, by year-end.
The Nigeria Customs Service recorded N471.7 billion from import duty trailed by the N216.4 billion generated from the Customs’ VAT.
According to the statistics, the sum of N120.4 billion was generated from non-federation accounts levies, while N84.3 billion was from federation accounts levies.
The document also showed that the sum of N76.9 billion was generated from excise duty and N6.6 billion was received from fees.
All these cumulated to N976.6 billion, which showed that it was on course to beat the sum of N1.3 trillion that was generated as revenue in 2019. In 2019, the agency gave itself a target of N937 billion but it exceeded it by N404 billion.
The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Mr Hameed Ali, assured the country of generating substantial revenue in spite of the pandemic.
Mr Ali gave this assurance while commending his officers and men for their resilience and commitment to duty during the challenging period of coronavirus.
“Nigeria and indeed the world have been challenged with COVID-19, but we are still doing our best, there is no cause for alarm in terms of revenue generation,” Mr Ali said.
Recently, the federal government approved $3.1 billion for the automation of the customs’ operations.
