The House of Representatives on Thursday increased the revenue target of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) from N1.4 trillion to N1.6 trillion for the 2021 fiscal year.
The House also approved about N257, 183, 671, 694. 71 as budget for the NCS for this year and another N216, 646, 579, 231. 00 as budget for the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for the same period.
The House also approved the request from the president to borrow about $1.5 billion and Euro 995 million to finance projects under the 2021 budget.
The Chairman House Committee on Customs and Excise, Leke Abejide said the Committee consider initial target of N1.465 trillion given to the service as inadequate and as such increase it to N l.678 trillion based on the fact that the target for 2021 Fiscal year is less than N 1.562 trillion collected in by the service in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said the committee also considered the expanded excisable item to include carbonated drinks, reduction of levy on new vehicles and devaluation of naira that will increase volume of money collected in naira term during the year.
Also approved by the House was the seven per cent cost of collection for 2021 of N111,573,991,091.00.
They also approved that the service should keep two per cent of Value Added Tax (VAT) collected on behalf of the FIRS to be retained by the Customs and another N47,007,935,827.20 intervention Fund from the Comprehensive Import Supervision Scheme (CISS).
The Customs budget include Personnel Cost of N99,719,722,681.71, Overhead Cost of N19,530,769,000.00 and Capital expenditure N137,933,270,013.00.
