By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Mrs. Zainab Ahmed Wednesday said that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari has ratified the President’s anticipatory approval for the contract for the Nigerian Customs modernization worth $3.1 billion.
Mrs. Ahmed revealed this while briefing State House Correspondents after the FEC meeting. The minister said she presented a memo which is for the ratification of Mr. President’s anticipatory approval for the contract for The Customs modernization.
According to her, “the purpose of the memo we presented to Council was for a project that will enable the complete automation of the Nigerian Custom Service processes and procedures using the application and information and technology in all aspects of Customs administration, in favour of a firm known as E. Customs HC Projects Nigeria Limited For concessionary period of N20 years.
“The main objective of this project is to completely automate every aspect of the customs business and to institutionalize the use of smart and emerging technologies that will enhanced the statutory function of the Nigerian Customs Service in the areas of revenue generation as well as trade facilitation and enhancement of security.
The total cost of the project is in the sum of $3.1 billion.The consortium, the PPP group that have been approved are led by Messers Y Technologies with four other members. The committee that led this process also looked at the National Trade Impact process that has been going on for years and confirmed that the Nigerian e-customs project is a subset of the National Trade Impact and would prefer the Nigerian Customs to play it’s led role in the national trading platform.
“The Bionica Technologies West Africa Limited, Bargain Securities and Supplies Nigeria Limited, these are lead sponsor and co-sponsor. We also have The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) as the lead financier and Huawei Technology as a technical service provider.
“So Council today ratified Mr. President’s approval for the PPP concession for a 20-year period to Messers E. Customs HC Project Limited as a concessionaire for the delivery of customs modernization project.
“This is a project that will not have an immediate cost to the government, the investors are providing all of the financing and this revenue will be deployed in three phases and there will look over the investment in the concessionary period of 20 years. The key point is that it is not costing the federal government one thing, the $3.1 billion being proposed will be sourced by the sponsors and the partners”, she stated.
On whether the automation is a new project in Customs, she said: “The Nigerian Customs currently has some level of automation services but it’s not all of its serves that are automated. This is an end to end automation of all of Nigeria’s Customs Service processes and it’s going to bring huge value to the country.
“So this investment of $3.1 billion is broken down into capital investment of $1.2 million which will be done in three phases over 36 months by these investors and $1.1 million is our projection of the operational cost over the 20-year period of the implementation of this project.This project has the potential to yield up to $176 billion of revenue for the project and the consortia that are providing this investment are going to be paid over time according to the schedule that is negotiated for their investments including their profits and cost.
“So this is the best possible way for Nigeria to roll out important capital project using funds from the private sector and providing service for the use of Nigerian people and the government.
Asked if Customs is going to overtake petroleum as source of revenue for the country, she replied thus: “We hope that at some point that revenues from oil will begin to be insignificant compared to revenue from the non-oil sector in the Nigerian economy. That’s our aspiration and that is the true meaning of diversification”.
