Lagosians can now process their import duty exemption certification (IDEC) process from the Nigerian Customs as the Federal Government has finalised the automation process which began December 2019.
With the new system, the processing time for granting duty waivers has been reduced to an average of three to five working days, from a former timeline of 60 to 180 days.
Recall that the Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed, in December, decried that the high incidences of revenue losses by government was due to the manual processing of applications, resulting in multiple approvals and delays in processing applications.
Between 2011 and 2015, the government said it conceded about N1 trillion to grants in just four categories of waivers.
Also, she said the manual process encouraged indiscriminate allocations and subjectivity in the approval process, which pose major constraints to monitoring, evaluation and standardising the process of granting waivers and certificates.
The IDEC automation is expected to create employment, reduce poverty, stimulate macroeconomic conditions for sustainable growth and development.
