CRFFN to resolve grey areas with Customs Acts

Tayo Oladipupo

The Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) has disclosed that it would work on areas where the Act establishing the Council and Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA) had conflicts for immediate resolution.

Recall that freight forwarders have at several times caught in the web of which agency they owe their allegiance.

This has culminated in avoidable divisions among the practitioners especially when it concerns controversial or issues of interest.

Chief Increase Uche, a board member of the Council and Chairman, Research and International Liaison Committee of the Council said this in a chat with newsman in Lagos, recently.

Uche who is the National President of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) added that the Council through his committee will work to place the freight forwarding practice in Nigeria on the same pedestal with what is obtainable globally.

He stated that the committee would engage other freight forwarders from neighbouring countries and those of far away countries like Europe, Asia, America as according to him, freight forwarding is an international business hence whatever practitioners were doing here must be in tandem with what is happening in other climes.

He revealed that adopting the nomenclature ‘freight forwarding’ had been a major setback in the sense that people were still struggling to understand what a practitioner in the industry should adopt as the nomenclature adding that, “Sometimes you see people bearing the name clearing and forwarding agents and most time again, you see clearing agents claiming that that they are not freight forwarders”.

He said, “So, we go into deep research to unravel some of those areas of conflict so that we straighten them because without that, some of us that are even in the council will not even understand why they are there.

“Locally here, there is need that we go into thorough survey to understudy the clearance procedures, the guidelines and all that, not only on cargo clearance alone but the management of the entire supply chain. Then, we juxtapose that with what is playing on in the West Africa sub region. So, once that is completed, we need to move further to Europe to pick some of the ports there, pick some others from the Far East and we have to pick some other ones from the US. So, we will do a comparative analysis of the ports to determine what the standard practice in those climes is.

“Then we need to review some of the policies of government in our research exercise. We have to look at government policies starting from the opening of Form M to importation of cargo, then we look at all those stages of importation and cargo clearance out of the port and even export, we will look at those hindrances. We want to unravel the cause of non-compliance and on how to address those issues”.

He pointed out that the Council would interface with government agencies in the course of its research especially with the Nigerian Shippers’ Council the area of reintroduction of the Cargo Tracking Note (CTN).

His words, “It has become very imperative right now and for us check the excesses of our members and the shippers, there should be a check and that check will have to do with a measure and of course, you are aware that Liberia just introduced CTN which Cotonou has been using, same as Ghana which it has been using for quite some time now. Senegal recently introduced theirs and it will take off in less than a month”.

“So, these are measures being put in place by importing nations to ensure that the security of the supply chain is guaranteed so that some of the recalcitrant importers that will like to bring in contraband or concealments like arms and life threatening substances are put on check because if Nigeria reintroduces this CTN now, it will go a long way to curb the recurrent issue of non-compliance to trade rules.

“We will also look at the port operation and management, those areas we feel that is really causing port congestion. Of course, you are aware of the state of the roads. Government has been trying its best on how to rehabilitate the roads and then of course, once cargo flow is not freely moving at a given speed, there is always a tendency that inventories will build up in the port and once that happens, that is congestion and in the process, both importers and freight forwarders will start losing their investments.

“In fact, our role is going to be very comprehensive in what we intend to do, we would want to actually touch the whole facets of the logistics supply chain and then fine-tune ways in which we will simplify and make the clearance process very transparent”, he added.