The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) said it would restart the implementation of the controversial vehicle identification number (VIN) valuation policy on imported vehicles from Monday, May 2, 2022.
According to a report by the Nigeria Customs Broadcasting Network (NCBN) titled ‘Customs Reach Agreement with Stakeholders, Set reinstate VIN Valuation,’ the NCS has concluded plans to fully reinstate the controversial VIN valuation policy on imported vehicles in May.
Timi Bomodi, national public relations officer of Customs, said in the report that the reviewed system is coming after reaching an agreement with stakeholders.
He however said that the policy in the first instance failed to properly configure the date of depreciation of vehicles which made the values wrong.
He said that the NCS had incorporated the ideas and suggestions from the stakeholders even as he promised that stakeholders would be satisfied with the new VIN valuation policy.
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He however charged importers and clearing agents to be transparent and honest in their declarations at the port.
Recall that the controversial VIN valuation policy for allocating standard values to all imported vehicles was introduced in February 2022 by NCS.
According to freight forwarders, the Customs’ VIN valuation system generated wrong and outrageous values put at more than 200 percent for imported cars.
They also said that the system did not consider rebates and depreciation values that were supposed to be given to accidental cars.
These issues prompted freight forwarders to embark on a two weeks protest that created a backlog of uncleared goods at the port and subsequently forced the NCS to suspend the policy for 30 days.
