Impact of Customs Clearance Process on the Performance of Consumers, Industrial and Healthcare Products’ Manufacturers in Lagos and Ogun States

Abstract

ABSTRACT The performance of the Nigerian manufacturing sector has been unsatisfactory low. This study therefore inves tigates the impact of Customs clearance process in Lagos Seaports on the performance of the three dominant sec tors namely consumers’ goods, industrial goods and Healthcare manufacturers. A questionnaire survey was con ducted on twenty-three (23) sampled firms comprised of 7 consumer goods, 10 Healthcare, and 6 industrial goods respectively. This represents 30.4%, 43.5%, and 26.1% of consumer goods, healthcare, and industrial goods re spectively. In addition to primary data, time-series data for a period of ten (10) years were collected from second ary sources. Prior to the estimation results of short run and long run estimates the pre-estimation outcomes such as descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, cross-sectional dependence, stationary and co-integration were esti mated and reported accordingly. The results of panel Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) estimates show that enhancing Customs clearance at the seaports will effectively help to enhance the performance of the firms. The im pact of Customs clearance cost on performance indicators of firms quite varies, higher in industrial goods firms, afterward, healthcare firms and consumer goods firms. The results suggest that firms’ performance is much dependent on importation of manufacturing inputs and this characteristic of firms in Lagos and Ogun states makes this study to conclude that economy of this region is still highly import-dependent and the region need more efforts to change this trend.