Customs loses 200 to 300 billion per year – Report

Cameroon customs loses 200 to 300 billion FCfa less than the real potential of foreign trade of the country due to poor practices at the port in Douala.

This was disclosed in a report being finalized at the Ministry of Finance (MINFI).

These revenues, which were pegged at 700.8 billion FCFA in 2014, could rise if the malfunctions, usually premeditated, were ended upstream, insists the document that APA came across.

At the end of the investigation conducted by customs experts, MINFI, as well as the Department of trade, it was established that the administration was suffering from non-mastery of the value of the goods resulting in the proliferation of the application of the minimum values prohibited by the agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on customs valuation applied by Cameroon since 2001.

This practice, noted the interdepartmental report, has a negative effect on revenues resulting in contraction of trade in products and biases at the same time in accounting firms.

The audit points to the proliferation of false exemptions in an administration where the general principle is the payment of duties and taxes, and the total violation of the Customs Code of the economic community of Central Africa States (CEMAC) which certainly provides measures of reduction and exemption from duties and taxes for importers, but after a codified procedure.

Other negative factors against the finances concerning exemptions is the large-scale certification of verification on importation (AVI) and deductions from taxable value on used vehicles resulting in the reduction of the taxable value of imported goods.

On this subject, the head of the Department of finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey, on March 6, 2015, reprimanded the Director-General of customs Minette Libom li . He said “the existence of many distortions in the implementation of the programme to secure customs revenue" which makes the "State to loss significant budgetary resources, are detrimental to the credibility of the framework for collaboration between the Government and the Société Générale de surveillance (SGS).»

According to MINFI, cases of possible derogation should imperatively be submitted at its discretion in accordance with the texts in force and with the constant aim of the need to optimize the mobilization of budgetary revenues and taking account of contractual government commitments. However, hundreds of exemptions, which APA was able to obtain copies, have continued to be granted to importers.

Auditors also discovered a very common practice for posterior controls on the goods in the import declaration introduced initially to allow the decongestion of the port and to relieve the importers.

The control system of these procedures, according to the audit report, was sabotaged for years and gives free reign to a regime of underestimation or fanciful declarations of goods, which itself adds to the proliferation of false exemptions supported in the computer system.

Contacted by APA on all these subjects, Mme Libom li Likeng did not respond to request of information written through her address.