Nigeria Custom Service (NCS) has said that it introduced ‘Nigeria Trade Hub’ a portal to ease international business transactions and
promote seamless international business transactions in the country.
Mr. Wale Adeniyi, public relations officer of the Service, said that the portal was a ‘single window’ to enhance international trade processes in Nigeria.
Adeniyi said that the interactive portal would assist importers or exporters to obtain correct and timely information to enable decision making in carrying out business in the country.
According to him, Customs articulated the porter in consonance with the working requirements of all regulatory agencies that were involved in the management of trade in the country.
Adeniyi added that the portal was seamlessly linked to the Nigeria national single window ensuring that once the decision was made with import or export transaction, all selected details captured during the search would be transferred to the single window.
He further linked the initiative to saving an importer or exporter the time and cost of rebutting all the information.
The PRO stated that: “Now, it is basically a trade information platform whereby anybody who wishes to do either import or export business in Nigeria can visit or access the porter and get all information needed.
“First for customs, it helps to classify products; it is an online base portal that can be access by anybody, anywhere in Nigeria as long as you are on Internet.
“So it is an Internet-driven project that is why we say it represents positive development on how ICT is helping customs to serve Nigeria better and to facilitate economic development. ‘’
The customs spokesman said that the portal provides the importer or exporter with contact details of all organisations linked with trade in Nigeria.
The portal will users with the searchable contact directory that would provide details of all processing agencies and other supervisory government agencies and organisations related to trade in the country.
The portal also has a harmonised system of goods classification that would assist and guide the importer or exporter with accurate harmonised system classification of their products to aid compliance.
Adeniyi said that the portal also provided all the necessary tariff and guidelines information of the prohibition list, taxes, and duties due.
He said that the portal also provided searchable document library of downloadable document relevant to trade in Nigeria from official publications to legal information, regulatory document and customs procedures.
Adeniyi said that the portal contained other tools such as customs process, centre code directory, currency converter and the link to the single window registration tool.