With lessons from the failed one trillion naira revenue target by the leadership of Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) in 2016 due to recession and forex crisis, the agency has downgraded its 2017 target to N900bn.
Giving the target, the Service said it hopes to generate between N700 billion and N900 billion as revenue for the Federal Government this year.
Explaining more in Abuja during this year’s International Customs Day with the theme: ‘Data Analysis for Effective Border Management,’ Ali noted that NCS generated N898 billion from the N937 billion target set for last year.
According to him, “We are working on it. We are looking at between N700 – N900 billion. The budget has not been finalized. Until the budget is finalized we will get the final approval. No we never had N1trillion, it was N937 billion. We got N898 billion.
“We are a little bit short but if you appreciate the trading volume you will know that the Nigeria Custom has done extremely well.”
Analysts say if the ban on the 41 items currently on restriction list for forex access is not lifted and on time, the revenue haul this may be even lesser than 2016 exploits by the Customs.
