Daily Watch – Tin Can Customs revenue falls, Banks to reduce loan grants

20th April 2016

  • The Tin-Can Island Command of the Nigerian Customs Service, has recorded a fall in revenue of N2.7 billion in the first quarter of 2016, compared to N61.6b billion it made in the first quarter of 2015. Chris Osunkwo, the Command’s spokesman said that the Command made seizures of 60 cartons of centre tables, 30 cartons of cooking oil, 60 cartons of fruit juice, and 25 cartons of spaghetti, all with a Duty Paid Value of N3.6 million in January. Fifty bundles of used tyres, 15 cartons of table water and 10 cartons of vegetable oil, 11 bags of used clothes and three bags of used shoes, all with a DPV of N600,000 were also made in February, while 70 cartons of tissue paper, 70 cartons of nylon, 24 bags of fruit juice, 21 bags of used shoes and a woman’s bag, all with a DPV of N571,000 was recorded in March. The Comptroller-General, Nigeria Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) had earlier said that the fall in revenue was as a result of some policies by the CBN.
  • The police service commission has said that 705,352 candidates applied to fill the vacancy for 10,000 personnel in the Nigeria Police Force. PSC spokesman, Ikechukwu Ani, said that 202,427 applications were for the position of cadet assistant superintendent of police, 169,446 for the position of cadet inspector and 333,479 for the position of constables. Ani said that the commission will recruit 500 cadet ASPs, 500 cadet inspectors, 1,500 specialist officers and 7,500 constables to meet the approved 10,000 new entrants into the force.
  • Nigerian banks have decided to reduce the number of loan grants available to their customers for the year 2016, as a result of the high number of non-performing loans propelled by the economic challenges in the country. There was a general rise in bad loan rate in the banking industry by 78.8% (N649.63 billion) last year. This shows a huge drop in the quality of loan portfolio of 22 banks as declared in their 2015 annual reports released, by 30% (N5.78 trillion); this is due to a great fall in oil price, weak output growth, reduced investor confidence, low propensity to save, fiscal imbalances at the government level and so on. The lingering foreign exchange challenge in the country has forced foreign banks to cut credit lines to Nigerian banks. Moreso, eight banks over-shot the regulatory limit of 5% bad loan ratio to eight in 2015 as against three banks in 2014, demonstrating that the bad loan ratio for the industry in relation to total loans granted rose to 4.88% which is actually 1.2% lesser than the regulatory limit.