By Tony Obiechina, Abuja

Determined to plug revenue leakages associated with vehicle importation, among others, the federal government on Tuesday commenced the sensitization of stakeholders on the National Vehicle Registry Policy (VREG).

The government through the Federal Ministry of Finance, conceived and launched the VREG policy in 2021 as a means maximising revenue generation in the motor vehicle administration ecosystem in Nigeria.

Speaking at the Zonal sensitization seminar in Abuja, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun said the launching of VREG became imperative because of the country’s dwindling revenue orchestrated by falling oil prices and mono-economy further worsened by revenue leakages.

According to him, it was also necessary to unplug loopholes such as customs duty payment evasion, adding that 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.

The Minister said, “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 & 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, utilisaticn as a tool to mitigate the evasion of customs duty administration payment and drive operational efficiency in motor vehicle administration across state lines.

“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 leading to optimization and plugging of revenue leakages associated with vehicle importation, vehicle insurance administration, and motor vehicle.

“VREG is connected to multiple global VIN databases and vehicle history repositories for real-time international interconnectivity and robust duration of vehicular data towards ensuring all vehicles entering into Nigeria and operational within are interconnected to the global vehicular information network for the facilitation of global trade and crime fighting, amongst others.

“Furthermore, VREG serves as a dynamic aggregator of vehicular data pooled from the various vehicle administrating stakeholders to promote real-time information exchange and interconnectivity among stakeholders, towards the actualisation of their respective and collective mandates.

In addition, Edun  further stated, “the objectives of this policy, VREG is strategically positioned to provide insightful data analytics for policy formulation & implementation, mechanisms for the mitigation of revenue leakages from tax evasion and other revolutionization of vehicle insurance generation and compliance, improved crimes.

Vehicle administration inefficiencies, for increased revenue facilities through administration”.

The Minister lauded the attendance of majority of the critical stakeholders, including the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), National Collateral Registry (NCR), and the motor vehicle administration agency of most of the states including FCT at the seminar.