motor cultivated tractor |
The effort of the past
administration to diversify and reposition the country’s economy through the
removal of import duties on agricultural equipment, might have been faulted
with by the Nigerian Customs Service,
which might lead to high cost in the production of food and in furtherance make
farming more expensive for small holders farmers to participate in across the
country.
Import substitution been a prevailing
strategy for spurring economic growth in developing countries since it was
first theorized in the 18th century by Alexander Hamilton to protect developing
country from cheap imports has once been ignored as it was in the past. David Okpon spoke on the effect and
challenges of the resurface of import duties to farmers, read his excerpt
below:
Please introduce yourself?
I am David
Okpon, the Md. Goshenn Greenland, a representative of Lovol Arbos group a
Sino-Italian company. We are into agric consulting and we are into machinery,
we deal with tractors mainly, our tractors are from 5.5hours power to 260 horse
power and fully built tractor from 20.4 hp to 260hp. we have Goldoni tractor
and Rbus tractors, and they are all Italian products.
While
preparing for this exhibition we imported one of the low earned which is the
motor cultivated tractor, which is the pedestrian tractor, for the small holder
farmers, as the small holder make about 70% of Nigerian farmers, women and
children are the greatest number in them and then we thought that we should
empower this segment of agriculture farmers in Nigeria, fortunately when we
brought this tractors, we found out that the main tractor, the four will
tractors attract zero percent in charges while the motor cultivators attracts
35% in charges, which was something we couldn’t imagine, we were so shocked,
for instance we brought in the motor cultivator for N2.1million and the custom
charges is 35%, which is 745,000, and we have not been able to pay that money
up till now and we have come into the exhibition without not been able to show
our equipment, but the pictures instead of having the main tractor as we
proposed.
No this
tractor has sat down there and has incurred demurrage because we are not been
able to pull up money because we were told it was going to attract zero charges
from custom.
So why are you interested in bringing
in the motor cultivator?
The major
interest is that the major people producing food in Nigeria 70% of them are
small holder farmers, in their farms big tractors are useless, and they have
been laboring with hoe and cutlass for a long time and even for the young
people, like the NYSC people who finish who are done with school, we want to encourage
the young people to go into farming. Presently agriculture is the way to go,
because agriculture is the one that can increase the base of our economy, from
agriculture you can start cottage
industries and companies that produce, process and distribute, thereby
creating a vibrate value chain. Bringing in technologies is the basic way and fastest way to go into
agriculture to help people go into farming and the lowest earned we thought was
to bring this motor cultivator in, for instance the Oyo state government is
bring in mini tractors and that’s because they recognize the importance of mini
tractor in agriculture, many other states are doing the same so we think this
is where to go and in our research we knew that most farmers, small farmers
needs the motor cultivator, because they don’t need big tractors, because it’s
almost useless in the farms.
Do they do the same job?
They don’t,
this tractor has the capacity to use 50 implements and this 50 implements can
do 100 different jobs, from clearing the farm to tilling, harvesting ,
processing, and other things in down time, the time you are not farming,
sweeping the street or any kind of place or cleaning, it’s a multifunctional
kind of machine.
What is your request to the
government?
My request
to government is to reverse these particular charges, because this motor
cultivator falls under agric machinery.
So there are no charges for four
wheel tractors?
Four wheel tractors attract zero zero zero
custom charges, but the two wheel tractor attracts 35% and it is unbelievable.
So where do they classify it?
They classify it under what they call the HS
CODE, the HS Code for full scale tractor, fully built (FBU): HS CODE :
8701.9019.00 is different from what they call the pedestrian controlled
tractor, which is has a different HS Code 8701.1000.00. What we want is for
government to harmonize this, so that when you bring in a two wheel tractor it
also falls under the zero custom charges.
What is the implication of this
denial?
The
implication is that we have lost cost, because you can imagine if we have the
tractor on ground, for the people who want to see and touch it, it would have
given them a clearer picture of what they want to buy, so we have lost lot of
customers due to the absence of the machine. The adage of a 35% duty on this
machine will increase the price of the tractor, you can imagine if you bring in
a tractor for N2million and you add N1million on it, how much are we going to
eventually sell it to the farmers, who are not rich farmers, who can afford big
tractors, because after spending 35% which is N740, 000, you need to do another
Vat of 10% that brings almost N200, 000 on it, so it goes to N950, 000. So this
is not desirable because this tractor cannot sell get into the hands of people
who needs it, which is going to affect the productivity.
The small
tractors can be owned by farmer’s cooperative which is going to make farming
easier for them. The idea is cooperative should own one, and various farmers
can keep interchanging it and productivity will increase. Because what we are
driving is productivity increase.
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