Barring last minute change of mind or workable solution, there are strong indications are emerging that some importers may approach the Court to seek stoppage to demurrage charges on grounds of delays form the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) in facilitating the clearance of their goods at the ports.
Running for three weeks now, Nigerian importers had been finding it hard to upload the Standards Organisation of Nigeria’s Conformity Assessment Certificate on the Nigeria Customs Service trade portal, for the purpose of getting the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR).
Checks at Lagos ports show pile up of cargoes waiting for clearance even as the development has remained unresolved as at Tuesday evening, Business Hilights can authoritatively report.
Some of the importers that are looking at challenging the scenario at the court told our correspondent that the idea of going to court if negotiations fail is coming from the fact that the demurrage that had continued to accumulate since the past two weeks on their cargoes could be very painful to pay because it was not their fault after all.
Responding in an interview, President of the Import Group at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Mr Donald Uche, revealed that the group had written to the SON and the inspection agent, SGS, requesting them to fix the problem even as the demurrage was already accumulating for the importers and this would ultimately result in increase in the prices of the goods.
The fact of the matter is that though Nigerian Customs had integrated submission of regulatory documents to a single entity popularly called single window trade portal, the inability of importers to upload their SONCAP numbers onto the NCS trade portal made it impossible for them to move to the next stage of getting the PAAR without which the goods cannot be cleared.
The importers said they are going to court due to the fact that the Customs may not be able to listen to their explanations on why they failed to do the needful on SONCAP numbers which had become undoable due to no fault of theirs.
Though efforts to reach SON on the crisis failed, an official confided in our correspondent that “Since we upgraded the system, there had been issues in the site”.
