The Director of Operations, Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), Mr. Chike Aneke has disclosed that the trucks now carry more of export goods than they do on imported goods.
Speaking in an interview with newsmen in Lagos, Aneke revealed that he had never carry export goods in the seven years like he did in the last one year adding that export business was gradually growing and gaining prominence in the country.
“That means we are coming up but I don’t know whether it is the banking industry that is financing the trend or people pushing up the export or that there are more windows for exporters to have access and free movement of cargo or is there any other thing that the government did to facilitate export promotion but what I know is that for me, export is now more encouraging than the import and we do more export job now than import job. So, whichever way, I stand to be corrected anyway because I don’t have the statistics or data for now but what I know is that on my own, export from my experience is 40% and import is 60%”, he said.
Aneke who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Jaben Maritime Logistics Limited disclosed that he had carried 20 containers of export goods in the last two weeks saying he may not say for sure if his colleagues do have the opportunity he had in getting export goods to carry.
On which part of the country the goods moves from, he said,” they are coming from almost all the states of the federation. I may not be able to give you the details of the states from which the export commodities are coming from but for me, I know that my own are coming from this Lagos state and we are exporting to almost six countries in Africa; Senegal, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Cameroun. Then we also export to Qatar, Dubai”.
He continued,” We export charcoal, aluminum foil, toilet rolls; agricultural produce is also part of it. Countries like Dubai and Qatar believe that our charcoal is one of the best but because of deforestation, sometimes, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture do place a ban on it especially when export reach a maximum tonne so that Nigerians will not fell all the woods in the forest. You know Nigerians, once you open up a window of opportunity, everybody will go into it and they will start felling trees everywhere. So, for now, I think government just closed the window for some time. So, we are waiting, as soon as we get approval from the customs, so that we start lifting, we go back to business”.
Photo: President, Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), Chief Remi Ogungbemi.
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