E-Certification, Not Cause Of Congestion At Seaports –NAFDAC



The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has described as false, reports that the e-certification it initi­ated last year as part of Feder­al Government port reforms was not responsible for cargo congestion in the nation’s sea­ports.

In a statement made avail­able to our source recently, the Prof. Christiana Mojisola Adeyeye, Director-General, NAFDAC, said the claims were completely un­true, baseless and a bid to mislead the general public on the clearance of products at the various seaports.

Adeyeye said, “As part of ongoing modernisation reforms by the federal gov­ernment at the ports, NAF­DAC has assiduously worked towards the automation and digitisation of NAFDAC pro­cesses and licenses respec­tively. This has resulted in the development and deployment of NAFDAC e-licenses for utilisation in the clearance of NAFDAC regulated products.
or to the deployment of the e-license on September 9, 2019, NAFDAC had held sen­sitisation workshops for im­porters and Authorised Dealer Banks (ADBs) in 2018.

“This was to prepare im­porters of NAFDAC regulated products on the need to digitise any documents that were not in electronic formats while the processes for the issuance of new NAFDAC licenses was au­tomated and processed on the Federal Government Single Window for Trade (FGSWT) which is a one-stop portal for various Agencies operating at the Ports.

“In the past, NAFDAC documents were physically scanned and attached to the Central Bank of Nigeria Form M platform. As a result of this, the ADBs and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) were not able to verify and authenticate submitted NAF­DAC documents.

“This gave room for unscrupulous importers to forge and use expired NAFDAC licenses to process their Form Ms. With the commencement of the e-license era, NAFDAC integrat­ed her licenses with the Form M plat­form such that im­porters are no lon­ger required to scan and attach NAFDAC licenses but only input their Approv­al Reference Numbers which would be auto-verified by the Form M platform during processing. As a result, many importers who were used to utilising unapproved licenses could not process their Form Ms.”
She said it was against the Federal Ministry of Finance Import Guidelines, Proce­dures and Documentation requirements under the Des­tination Inspection Scheme to ship any consignment without opening Form M, adding that Form M cannot be validly opened without having a valid license from the agency regu­lating the product.

She said, “Those in this predicament have been violat­ing this import procedure for years and they are now caught up because of this integration. It is therefore, misleading, de­ceptive and baseless for any importer or agent alluding the congestion at the ports to the e-certification processes of NAFDAC.

“Indeed, this is a means of perpetrating evil and attempt to continuing in dirty and unscrupulous procedures in clearance of regulated prod­ucts. Their attempts can be considered as frustrating trade facilitation.”

The NAFDAC boss said any compliant importer of NAFDAC regulated products having approved NAFDAC e-licenses and has followed the approved Federal Ministry of Finance Import Guidelines, Procedures and Documen­tation requirements under the Destination Inspection Scheme will not complain about NAFDAC’s Introduction of e-licenses.

NAFDAC was a responsible regulatory agency determined to facilitate trade and comply with the federal government’s reform agenda for the various ports, she explained.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Limited Information Frustrates Young Women From Using Family Planning

Nestle Takes Action To Promote Safe Food And Empowers Food Vendors

Develop Specific Security Reforms To Curb Corruption In Defence Sector, National Assembly Urged