As the withdrawal of Services embarked upon by the Freight Forwarders operating at Apapa port enters its fifth day, stakeholders are already counting their losses.
A cross-section of stakeholders who spoke with newsmen on Thursday on the action said APMT, ENL and freight forwarders had lost between ten and twenty billion Naira within the last four days.
However, the former Chairman, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Tincan Island Chapter, Dr. Kayode Farinto stated that the Federal government had not lost anything to the crisis as according to him people were still able to pay their duty irrespective of the withdrawal of service by the freight forwarders.
“The beautiful thing about the Nigerian economy is that it is not stagnant, people are able to pay their duty despite the withdrawal of services because they don’t need to go to AP Moller to pay their duty. The only thing we are likely to witness is congestion as a result of the backlog. They are unable to do examination and they cannot release our cargo and you cannot go for customs release but you can still pay duty that is the beautiful thing”.
“The Federal government has not lost anything as far as I know. APMT must have lost about one billion Naira because of the storage charges that they are supposed to collect and don’t forget that the shipping companies to are losing money because the boxes are still in the terminal, they are not delivered and once they are not delivered, demurrages are accruing on those boxes”, he said.
He noted that after the issues surrounding the withdrawal of service were resolved, there must still be another sitting even if all parties must continue to work to see how to redress the issue of the four days that both parties did not work to determine who bears the burden.
He said, “It is APMT that will bear the cost of the demurrage, it is their headache. Number one, they must have to be able to waive the four days out rightly, then they should know how they will talk to their mother company to waive four days or a minimum of two days. That is only when there will be peace, if not, this thing will continue, we are ready for it for another one or two weeks”.
On his part, the Chairman of ANLCA Apapa Chapter, Mr. Olumide Fakanlu stated that the issue of who bore the cost of the demurrage had not yet arose adding that when that one comes, it would be tackled on its own merit.
Fakanlu said,” when we get to the bridge, we know how to cross it, either waiver or something else. The usual thing is that when there is a strike like this, there should be waiver. We are going in there, we demand for that one too. It is not a new thing”.
Also speaking, the Chairman, National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA) Apapa Chapter, Alhaji Ibrahim Tanko said,” for now, I cannot give you off hand but the government knows what it is losing. Roughly, I can say that we are losing between ten and twenty million Naira”.
For the Chairman, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) Apapa Chapter, Dr. Fred Ajuzie added that,” if you ask me to put it in monetary term, I am not an accountant but as an association operator, I know that we have lost billions upon billions of Naira because we cannot quantify it. There was a time we put a write-up that we lost #56 billion in their hands”.
