THE Federal Government has approved a rate of 0.2 percent as a new import levy on Cost, Insurance, and Freight, CIF, that will be charged on imports coming into Nigeria.

Zainab Ahmed, the minister of Finance told State House correspondents on Monday after the federal executive council presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa.

According to the minister, the purpose of the new levy is to enable the African Union member countries pay on a sustainable basis their subscriptions to African Union.

“The exceptions include goods originating from outside the territory of member countries that are coming into the country for consumptions. It also includes goods that are coming in for aid and also it includes goods that are originating from non-member countries, but are imported through specific financing agreements that ask for such kinds of exemptions.

“It also exempts goods that have been ordered and are under importation process before the scheme was announced into effect. The council also approved that for Nigeria knowing that what will accrue from this new levy will be more than what is required as subscriptions to the African Union, that the balance that will be left will be ring first and put in a special account in the Central Bank of Nigeria and will be used to financed her subscriptions to multilateral organizations as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank and institutions like that,” she said.

According to her, if there is any excess left from that in the revenue pool, it will be used to finance the budget.

She also said the second approval was the setting up of the steering committee to be chaired by the Vice President for the design and implementation of a national single window.

The minister explained that the national single window is a web portal that would be able to integrate all the government agencies that are operators that are implementers in the port business or trading in the port system.

The Finance minister also disclosed that Council also approved an extension of a Central Bank of Nigeria intervention that will be used to continue to support the power sector specifically the generation arm of the sector.

“This is based on a commitment that we signed into as a country, where we have several guarantees to the Generation Companies, GenCos, to bridge any gap that they have after the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc, NBET, has settled them,” she said. – Leadership

May 21, 2019 @ 13:00pm GMT|