The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) generated about N977.09 billion revenues in 2014 from its target of N1.2 trillion for the year.

According to the service’s summary of monthly revenue figure obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja, the revenue came from import and excise duties, levies and other fees.

NAN reports that the revenue figure showed an increase of N143.79 billion over the N833.4 billion NCS collected in 2013, representing about 15 per cent increment in collection.

The breakdown of the figure showed that N586.91 billion out of the amount collected was remitted to the Federation Account while N390.18 was remitted to non-federation account during the year.

A further breakdown showed that N511.55 billion was collected from import (cash); N8.59 billion from import duty (NDCC), while N39.76 was collected from fees.

The revenue report showed that N203.37 billion was collected from levies; N186.80 billion from Value Added Tax (VAT) and the Common External Tariff (CET) levy accounted for N24.61 billion.

A quarterly breakdown showed that N197.82 billion was collected in first quarter; N265.81billion in second quarter, while N249.29 billion and N264.05 billion were collected in third and fourth quarters respectively.

The comparison of the quarterly collection during the year revealed that the second quarter accounted for highest, while the first quarter recorded the lowest collection for the year.

NAN recalled that the Deputy Comptroller-General, Trade and Tariff, Adewuyi Akinade, had explained that the improvement in the collection was due to the service’s resilience in blocking leakages.

Mr. Akinade also said that the system audit put in place by the service had helped to enhance compliance by traders and blocked the potential areas of revenue leakages.

He added that the service carried out capacity building of its officers who had been adequately trained, to understand classification and evaluation of goods to enable them to collect appropriate duty.

(NAN)