The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) has okayed the present arrangement where one Minister oversees the affairs of the Ministries of Transportation and Aviation.
The National Director of CILT, Mr. Paul Ndibe who disclosed this in a chat with our correspondent in Lagos stated that having a separate Ministers to head the two Ministries amount to a waste of resources as the investment portfolio that accrues particularly from the aviation sector did not justify giving it a substantive Minister.
Ndibe posited that while one may argue that the contributions of the maritime industry to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of the nation’s economy was huge, the same could not be said about the aviation industry as there was no single investment by the country in terms of aircrafts as against its investment in airports and structures.
According to him,” If you look at the investment portfolio particularly from the aviation sector from the government’s point of view, there is virtually no investment in terms of aircrafts but there is a huge investment in terms of airports and structures.
“Could one argue that that will be enough to have a full Minister? It might not. Think of a country that has over a hundred fleet of aircrafts, even if it is fifty, having the planes and you have the airports and you have other facilities, having a Minister to oversee them makes sense.
“But in a situation where even from the public sector side, no single plane and you put a Minister there, then it draws some concerns. Look at also in the maritime, what do we have there? If we have our own ships flying our flags and indigenous ship owners having their own ships registered in Nigeria, if you look at the number, does it warrant also somebody to oversee?
If you look at the level of responsibilities attached to them to now determine the allocation of Ministers to those sectors or Ministries, in the maritime industry, if you weigh its contributions to the GDP as against what is coming from the aviation sector, you compare that and you weigh it accordingly.
“So, my thinking is that for maritime, yes in terms of its contributions to the GDP, it weighs higher than the aviation sector. But then you don’t just give a Minister to the maritime industry alone, you look at the contributions of the maritime industry along with other logistics modes, along with the railway and then you can group them together, then having aviation as a sub sector of that is fine under the present arrangement because if you look at their contributions to the GDP, it is minimal. It is more of foreign dependency, the performance of aviation sector except for the local flights is more of the foreigners”.
When reminded of the taxes paid by the foreign airlines which adds to the nation’s GDP, he replied,” What is the contribution of those taxes to the GDP and then how will they energize the economy as opposed to reception of ships carrying 300 to 600 containers and then the fees they pay for landing and the value they will place on the economy?
“So, if you look at that, the entire cost is what you should aggregate to determine how you schedule responsibility. It doesn’t stop at having the Ministers, what key roles, what target are they looking at? It is this target framework that should be built into whatever they do because they should be able to while functioning in that position energize the economy and develop the sector using policy that attract investment not basically from the public sector but from the private sector”.
The CILT Chieftain contended that having functional airports was not enough as efforts should be geared towards doing more to influence the choice of airlines flying in the day time as against the current practice where airlines operate only at night.
“So, they should be able through bilateral air services agreement synchronize all these so that the airports would be optimally and fully utilized”, he admonished.
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