Nigeria commences implementation of Single Window At Seaports

Abiola Seun

The Federal Executive Council (FEC), yesterday approved the setting up of a steering committee for the for the actualisation of the national single window.

The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this while briefing State House Correspondents at the end of the extra-ordinary FEC meeting presided over by the Vice president, Yemi Osinbajo at the Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja.

She disclosed that the committee will be chaired by Vice -President Yemi Osinbajo.

She said, “The second approval was the setting up of the steering committee to be chaired by the Vice President for the design and implementation of a national single window.

“The national single window is a web portal that would be able to integrate all the government agencies that are operators in the port business or trade in the port system.
“The trading platform will enable better efficiency of port operations and we project that it will significantly increased government revenues.”

Also, FEC, approved a new import levy for sustainable financing of Nigeria’s membership subscription in the African Union, AU. Imports

Ahmed said the FEC approved a rate of 0.2 percent as the new import levy on Cost, Insurance and Freight, CIF that will be charged on imports coming into Nigeria from AU countries.
She explained that there are some exceptions on goods originating outside the territory of member countries.
According to her, “The federal executive council meeting approved a new import levy for sustainable financing of Nigeria’s membership subscription in the African Union. It approved a rate of 0.2 percent as a new import levy on Cost, Insurance, and Freight (CIF) that will be charged on imports coming into Nigeria but with some exceptions.

“The exceptions includes goods originating from outside the territory of member countries that are coming into the country for consumption.

“It also includes goods that are coming in for aid and also it includes goods that are originating from non-member countries but are imported through specific financing agreements that ask for such kinds of exemptions. It also exempts goods that have been ordered and are under importation process before the scheme was announced into effect.”

She further explained that, “The purpose of this new levy is to enable the African Union member countries pay on a sustainable basis their subscriptions to African Union.

“The council also approved that for Nigeria knowing that what will accrue from this new levy will be more than what is required as subscriptions to the African Union, that the balance that will be left will be ring first and put in a special account in the Central Bank of Nigeria and will be used to finance her subscriptions to multilateral organizations as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank and institutions like that.
“And if there is any excess left from that in the revenue pool, it will be used to finance the budget