The Nigerian government has unveiled plans to end the
smuggling of vehicles into the country through the National Vehicle Registry
Policy, VREG.
VREG integrates vehicles’ data across several agencies,
including the Nigeria Customs Service, Vehicles Inspection Offices, the Police,
National Central Vehicles Data and that of the Federal Road Safety Corps’ data
base.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the
Economy, Wale Edun, told participants at the VREG Zonal Sensitisation Campaign
in Abuja yesterday that the initiative would curb customs duty evasion by
vehicle importers.
He said, “The Federal Ministry of Finance is saddled with the responsibility of managing the nation’s finances and revenue streams.
“In the midst of dwindling revenue orchestrated by falling
oil prices and mono-economy further worsened by revenue leakages from unplugged
loopholes such as customs duty payment evasion, it became imperative that government
provided effective responses to these issues.
“Furthermore, the absence of a dynamic and centralised
platform for national vehicular information, despite Nigeria being the largest
importer of vehicles in Africa with an additional 15 million vehicles
operational in the country.
“This huge vacuum had sustained the menaces of customs duty
evasion, paucity of data for vehicular policy formulation, nationwide vehicle
administration for revenue leakages, vehicle theft and vehicle-related crimes,
challenges in road traffic regulation enforcement, limited access to credit
facilities and ineffective vehicle insurance coverage and monitoring and
evaluation.
“It is worthy to note that since the emergence of VREG in
2021, several benefits of the registry have been achieved amongst which
include, utilisation as a tool to mitigate the evasion of customs duty
administration.
“Currently, VREG has been able to seamlessly integrate with
the critical stakeholders in attendance today and these connections have
brought about real-time, dynamic information exchange.”
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