Free Trade Agreement: ANLCA President , Nwabunike,  predicts loss in Customs Revenue  to AfCFTA

According to the ANLCA boss, the implication of the AfCFTA agreement is to promote inter African trade which means that the whole of African would now become borderless.

He warned that except the Federal Government deploys drastic measures to revive the manufacturing sector, the agreement would expose Nigeria’s inadequacies.

The ANLCA helmsman noted that the
agreement would affect the whole of Nigeria because, most times, Nigeria based her import duty charges as part of source of revenue generation.

“The AFCFTA would now bring down the revenue generation by federal government through the Nigeria Customs Service and the Customs brokers, you know the Customs generates revenue, but we licensed agents are the people paying the money”

“Customs Service and the Custom brokers are going to see a low level of revenue generation, and the federal government would no longer depend on our revenue generation to carry out their budget again, so in that area it would affect it”

“In total, I think the agreement would make all of us work hard and compete, there must be competition and you have to be very strong to compete”

“African Continental Trade Agreement is very complex, it is an issue that we need to seat down and discuss extensively. Sincerely, the President has signed it, so we don’t have anything to say about it, what we need to do now is to make sure that we play our role genuinely and correct”

“The African Trade Agreement is going to expose Nigeria’s inadequacies in manufacturing, it is going to expose us to all the lesser countries who have actually been seeing us as the giant of Africa, but at the end of the day, they would realise that we have nothing to back it up”

“I strongly believe that the federal government must have put its house together in areas of manufacturing, the agreement is all about opening up the borders of Africa, so what it means is that Africa is now borderless when it comes to inflow and outflow of goods and services”

“As the number one consuming nation in the whole African continent, the people that would gain more are countries like Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa, these are manufacturing countries, they would showcase all what they have including ICT and technology, but what can Nigeria showcase? Our export is only based on oil, what it means that Nigeria would become dumping ground for so many things and I wonder what  the federal government is going to contain it”

“And if we say that we are not signing the agreement, we would expose ourselves the more, this means that the whole African would be against us economically and you know what it means”

“Even Britain that is trying to do Brexit today has not found it easy, if Nigeria decides to exits today, where is their ally in the African countries economically? None” he said