The Chairman, Association of Igbo Maritime Practitioners of Nigeria has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to be more practical than theoretical in marshaling out policies that will drive the economy of the nation in the coming years.
Aniezechukwu who was speaking in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos also want President Buhari to acquaint the citizenry with the policy thrust of his administration so that people could use the thrust as a yardstick to measure progress being made by the current administration even as he said that he could not figure out what the policy thrust of this administration was close to a year in office.
“If the government’s policy thrust is on exportation, it should go all out for exportation, set up agricultural centres, give them deadlines to produce crops, enter into bilateral agreements with countries that we think could support our dream and then open up our ports and those things we think that we need in this country but lacked the capacity to produce, we should go all out to allow their importation and even reduce duty payable on them.
“The government must have a policy thrust so that even the stakeholders in this country will run in line with this policy thrust of the government. But as it is now, I do not even know what the policy thrust of the present Nigerian government is. The last time I listened to the CG of Customs, I heard him clearly saying that he want to reform, restructure and improve revenue. Those things are good, those things are the machineries of governance. Those are not economic policy thrust of either the Federal government of the revenue collecting agency”, he said.
Reviewing the first quarter of 2016 which just ended, Aniezechukwu maintained that there was no significant change in the maritime sector as statistics had shown that inflow of cargoes into the nation’s ports had continued to dwindle by the day adding that if one should go by statistics, the Nigerian maritime industry had not made any appreciable progress.
He said,” Concerning the operations, the Baltic inflow to the ports, statistics don’t lie, look at the Grimaldi’s statistics where my office is domiciled, as at yesterday, I was still discussing with some authorities at Grimaldi and they told me in confidence that a particular vessel that berthed didn’t have close to 50 consignment. Look at Five Stars, I am trying to move some consignments out of the Five Stars and I know that apart from the vessel that just berthed recently, the place is just like a playing ground.
“Look at the second gate, we know that the inflow of consignments in the country has dropped tremendously. I want to be factual over issues and if we place our judgment based on the statistics that are on ground, you find out that the activities in the ports dropped tremendously”.
He however attributed the downturn of cargo inflow into the country to the skyrocketing effect of the foreign exchange noting that he had a client who had not imported since last on account of not getting himself to import into the country under the prevailing situation even as he said that position of FOREX was not helping the importers in whichever way in this country.
According to him,” I was listening to a comment by the Chairman of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce who said that even for the manufacturing industry that 60% to 70% of the materials they use in Nigeria for their manufacturing plants were imported. Does that not send a message that the position of FOREX directly affected the port system?
“Secondly, let us look at the issues of some of the items listed by the CBN as those which should not be funded in the official FOREX market and brings us to our previous position when we started this interview, that you should look at the effect of the policies that you promulgate on the lives of the people especially if it has to do with products that are directly being used by the citizens”.
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