Following the loss of billions of naira to
waivers, the senate yesterday urged the
federal government to stop all waivers on rice
and agriculture produce importation for now
and mandated the central bank governor, and
the comptroller -general of customs to
ensure that all duty due to government were
recovered.
The senate also set up an adhoc committee
to look into all waivers and carry out holistic
reviews to determine the full recovery of all
government’s revenue related to this policy.
The committee which was given two weeks
to report back to the senate has senators
Gershom Bassey, Sam Egwu, Danjuma La’ah,
Stella Oduah, Tayo Aladura and Sabo
Mohammed as members while Adamu Aliero
is the chairman.
The resolutions are sequel to the motion
sponsored by Senator Adebayo Ibrahim
( Kwara) titled: “Indiscriminate Use and
Abuse of Waivers for Rice Importation.”
Leading the debate, Senator Ibrahim noted
that the federal government has a policy to
encourage agriculture business as a
deliberate policy to diversify the economy.
He also observed that this policy especially
relating to agriculture has become
significantly eroded and gradually made
nonsense of by indiscriminate abusive grants
of waivers, concessions and grants especially
on rice importation.
The lawmaker also noted that during the past
recess and during an interactive session with
the CBN, the CBN had revealed to the senate
how these importers had overshot their quota
and now owed the federal government duties
running into billions of naira
The federal government loses annually
N71billion on duty waivers especially to
importers of rice, palm oil, energy equipment,
steel and vegetable oil and in 2011,
government gave import duty waivers to 10
rice and palm oil importing companies alone
amounting to N150billion.
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