Tin can Island Customs sets N540bn revenue target for 2020

By Richards Adeniyi

Even though it is yet to get its official target from the Customs Headquarters in Abuja, the Tin Can Island Command of the Nigeria Customs Service has set for itself a yearly target of N540billion for year 2020.

The command said at this rate, it is expecting to collect not less than N47.4 billion on monthly basis as revenue.

Confirming this to the Journalists in his office last weekend, Image Maker of the command, Mr Uche Ejesieme described the Customs Area Controllers in charge of Tin Can Command, Compt Musa Baba Abdulahi as a proactive officer who has envisaged the expectations and has started sensitizing the stakeholders on how to realize the target.

Already, Compt Musa in the last couple of weeks has held meetings with different groups and stakeholders operating at Tin Can Port, seeking their corporation for the year 2020, while appreciating their supports to the command in 2019.

Uche said through support of stakeholders, the command was able to surpass its 2019 revenue target by N4billion.

“We had a target of N342 billion in 2019 and we were able to make N346billion with an excess of N4billion”

“Using the same projection, we are envisaging that the command out of the N2trillion target government has given us, Tin Can Command is envisaging to get N540billion for the year 2020. This translates to N47.4billion every month”

“It is actually not going to be very easy, but with the strategies that the Controller has put in place

This is the essence of the conversations, consultations and all the meetings he has been holding”

“He met with officers in middle cadre, OC terminals, members and leadership of the various associations, key security agents and so on”

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“In all of these meetings, he highlighted some of the achievements we made last year, thanking them for their support and collaboration and also preparing their minds for the challenges ahead, because we believe that Customs alone cannot achieve this, that is why the Comptroller is seeking the support of all and sundry so that the anticipated target of the command is achieved”

“With the comparative advantage from the border closure, we are hopeful, what we have agreed at  these meetings is to tighten the lose ends in the value chain”

“We are still expecting our figure from the headquarters, but before then, the Comptroller as a proactive officer has actually set a standard of N540 billion for the command which is translating to N47.4 billion monthly, and we are striving to make sure we meet up” he said

When the Customs spokesman was queried by our correspondent on where the Customs expects the revenue to come from, considering the fact that government is preaching local manufacturing, he said that the command is also expecting a lot of improvement in exportation.

Ejesieme corrected that everything about Customs is not only on target meeting and revenue generation, he said customs officers are also particular about trade facilitation.

“Unfortunately, Nigerians are not taking complete advantage of the Windows that federal government has opened about export, if we do more of export than import, it would also give us an edge, because we would now talk about balance of trade, right now the volume of import is still higher than export”

“The government is trying to sensitize people to take advantage of the free facilities and incentives in export” he said.

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