As mixed reactions continued to trail the planned re-introduction of the Cargo Tracking Note (CTN) as announced by the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), the National President, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Dr. Eugene Nweke has assured that the CTN as currently contemplated by the NSC has no additional cost to both the importers and their agents.
Nweke who was reacting to fears in some quarters of additional cost on the importers and their agents following the initial CTN concept that was introduced in 2010 by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and was later suspended as a result of protests that greeted the document then said that those who were perceived to be reacting in the negative were people who lacked the understanding of what the new CTN was all about.
He recalled that the CTN in an ideal situation had fundamental aims and objectives of which it would achieve in the ports system saying that part of that aims included but not limited to issues relating to security, safety and guarantee of goods coming in from one port to the other and that above all, it had to do with trade facilitation.
According to him,” If you see it from this point of view, you will now start asking yourself what other improvements and enhancements can Cargo Tracking Note do in the industry? I want to tell you the gospel truth, why you see us in Nigeria because we are import dependent nation and we lacked the capacity, our insurance companies and underwriters are being shortchanged. Why? It is because foreign forwarders and their carriers cannot buy our insurance policies over here.
“That is why when we are opening Form M, we are opening Form M with the mindset that we are paying insurance to somebody we don’t know somewhere. They will see information and Cargo tracking Note built therein. Then the insurance people will have adequate information and they can now compete with those in Nigeria.
“So, that means with Cargo Tracking Note, we are going to evolve a new concept of integrating the insurance because we import based on Cost, Insurance and Freight, then with Cargo Tracking Note, we make the foreigners who come to lift our crude oil and other exportation on FOB to revert back to pick it on CIF so that our insurance component will be included. So, that is one of the things Nigerian Shippers’ Council is trying to evolve”.
The NAGAFF boss further affirmed that with proper handling and administration of the CTN, a system of trust and guarantee will evolve what is called the principle of trans-shipment patronage so that when a transit cargoes are coming to Nigerian ports, it has a guarantee adding that whoever was insuring the transit arrangement from the Nigerian ports to the hinterlands or the land locked nations would do that with guarantee which would in turn mean that the Nigerian ports would obviously become the next destination of beehives of trans-shipment cargoes.
“So, any other person telling you any other thing short of what I have said, the person is not yet educated and tutored on the new concept of Cargo Tracking Note. Again, I must emphasize that cargo Tracking Note does not have any other additional cost, it has no cost.
“Before now, the component of ocean freight coming to Nigeria as inbound cargo is included of so many charges that are unnecessary. For instance, when you are paying ocean freight from any part of this country for cargo coming to Nigeria, they charge you for war risk. Are we in a war situation? If it is because of what is happening in Borno and some other places, is it enough criteria for you to charge us war risk? No, it is not enough because within the eastern and southern parts, we have an enabling peace. So, you have no right to charge but this is some of the things that were built in which the Nigerian Shippers’ Council has been fighting at the level of the international shipping organization.
“Then we have other charges that have to do with and of course, you know diversion, we have about 16 components of ocean freight paid by our people. So what the Nigerian Shippers’ Council is doing is to negotiate out, to remove those ones that are unnecessary and bring those ones that any other nation has included as their ocean component and that is how they are going to integrate the issue of Cargo Tracking Note. So, it did not add any cost”, he explained.
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