Due to the rising insecurity in the country, President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the minister of transportation, Hon. Rotimi Amaechi to reintroduce Cargo Tracking Notes (CTN) to curb the proliferation of arms. It is also expected that the nation would generate whopping $20million from the scheme, LEADERSHIP learnt.
Though, President Buhari is shopping for ideas on how to beef up security in the country, the re-introduction of CTN will also plug revenue leakages at the seaports in the tune of $20m annually.
Information has it that Amaechi, has, directed the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) to commence preparation to undertake the responsibility of administering CTN as it takes off.
The Cargo Tracking Note (CTN) or the Electronic Cargo Tracking Note (ECTN), is a system for collecting documents and processing information when exporting by sea to participate in security measures, statistics, as well as in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Customs Organisation (WCO) recommendations on trade facilitation and security.
Shippers’ council has been encouraged to introduce the system in a way that shouldn’t add to the cost of doing business at the ports, but enable the nation to track imports from ports of origin to drastically reduce importation of arms.
In 2017 alone, 2,671 pump-action rifles were intercepted at Nigerian seaports. The guns were legally registered for export in Turkey as pump-action rifles for hunting but the manifests were changed in Morocco to become steel doors to enable the container gain entry into Nigeria.
With CTN, however, Nigeria would have been able to see the original manifests from Turkey and intercept the guns before the consignments arrived in Nigeria.
Twenty-four African countries presently use CTN and these nations include; Angola, Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana and Guinea among others.
Although CTN has had two stints at Nigerian ports previously, under the administration of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and later NSC, Nigeria would have to prequalify the possible companies via a bidding process.
Speaking on the reintroduction of CTN, a maritime lawyer, technocrat and director of education and research at the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), Dr Alban Igwe, said CTN remains the best answer to issues of anomalies and security challenges in the country.
Igwe explained that this was because CTN will improve the security and safety of the supply chain as it will profile cargoes being imported into the country.
“The objective is to improve the security and safety of the supply chain and help us see the profile of products we are bringing in. It will help us know the origin and destination of cargoes and help us know our enemies,” he said.
Besides insecurity, CTN, he stressed, has also been described as the best platform in checking revenue leakages in imports as well as obtaining information about the content of the cargoes.
CTN, he pointed out, will address situations in which importers under-invoice their goods from the suppliers at the point of purchases to pay less duties, while the platform will check the trend to ensure manifests are not tampered with by ships for the purpose of cheating on GT.
The executive secretary, NSC, Mr Hassan Bello, whose council is to handle CTN describes it as another instrument that will add tremendously to shipping development.
According to Bello, “It will boost the revenue of the government in customs revenue collection in the sense that it will abate under – declaration and concealment. It will boost the revenue of NPA because there will be no more alteration of the manifests. It will boost the revenue of NIMASA because under – declaration on the weight of ships will not be there any longer.
“CTN is also a veritable source of data and some economic experts describe this as the best quality of the electronic based platform. You will know everything that is coming into your country. We have had many African countries having this because it is the initiation of the Union of African Shippers Council (UASC). ”