Maritime Group Urges FG To Reduce NAC levy to 2%
Advocacy for Maritime Development Association of Nigeria (AMDAN) has urged the federal government to slash the 15 per cent National Automotive Council (NAC) levy to 2 per cent.
The Chairman of the association, Segun Alabi explained that the 15 per cent NAC levy was detrimental to the economy, noting that its introduction simply underlines the insensitivity of the Federal Government to the harsh economic realities of the average Nigerian under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said: “The idea of NAC is to protect the local automobile assembly and building industry. It is simply to discourage the importation of fairly used foreign vehicles, in order to keep the ones assembled here attractive to Nigerians.
“The Federal Government has to stop being arbitrary. According to Common External Tariff (CET), vehicles attract 20 per cent but only for our government to jerk it up to 35 per cent. We have only managed to resolve that and before you blink they came up with a 15 per cent NAC levy”, wondered Alabi who stressed that the entire freight forwarding community in Lagos was averse to payment of fairly used vehicles
Alabi cautioned the government from overburdening the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) with lofty and unrealistic duty targets which he said had left the NCS overstretched while the Nigerian business community frustrated.
Alabi said: “The Nigeria Customs in order to meet the bogus target set for them by the government had to introduce the outrageous 15 per cent NAC levy which when assimilated into productions costs, is passed onto the common man in the market the result is the galloping inflation we are witnessing and consider the fact that these importers and manufacturers access loans on interest rates of as high as 22 per cent, probably the highest in the world right now. How does the business community or the common man survive under these dire circumstances?” Alabi wondered.
“We are not saying that government should not develop the local auto industry but 15 per cent is too much, not at this time that the economy is down and people are suffering, we advise the federal government to go to the 2 per cent for the sake of the people.” “Look at leakages in the oil sector, look at the level of oil theft going on, on a daily basis that is in billions of dollars and the government has failed to act drastically to curb this malfeasance.”
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