The National Publicity Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Dr. Kayode Farinto has said that the maritime sector in Nigeria performed worst in the first half of 2017 compared to its performance in the same period in 2016.
Farinto who made his assessment of the maritime industry in Nigeria in the first of 2017 known to our correspondent in Lagos said that that the industry was not moving forward as it had remained stagnant in recent times.
According to him,” We know we are in recession but government is not helping the industry. There are too many policies that are not encouraging the importers, there are facilities that are supposed to be put in place that government has failed to put in place as its responsibility to the people.
“The issue of 41 items that don’t have access to FOREX is still there, don’t forget that it has not been revoked, people still don’t have access to this FOREX. This issue of rate of duty on vehicle is there, it is not helping our economy. Despite the fact that they said vehicles should not come through the land borders, these vehicles are still coming in and they are still registering. What we were made to understand is that they will find it difficult to register, they are being on daily basis. It is just that we are killing our borders to the benefit of the neighbouring countries”.
While lamenting poor road network in Apapa, he recalled that the government was generating nothing less than ten billion naira from the seaports in the western zone yet the roads were very bad leaving containers to fall off from the trailers on daily basis as a result of bad roads.
He added that importers were now bankrupt because of the government’s inability to put facilities in place even as he said that the development alone was killing the economy.
“Don’t forget that I am part of the committee that is looking at the Ease of Doing Business but nothing urgent had been done on the issue of roads except that we know that on the issue of Apapa road, Dangote and Flour Mills promised to do the road as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility which they have not done. What they are now doing is to put rubbles as palliative measure.
What about the road leading to Mile 2? The road has been abandoned, we have serious potholes as you are ascending the bridge if Tincan from 2nd gate up to Mile 2, this is abandoned, nothing has been done. Nigerians are dying on daily basis on that road”, he said.
Farinto who is also the Managing Director of Wealthy Honey Investment Limited pointed that one should not blame those trailer drivers as there were no roads to the ports adding that even when they succeeded in taking containers to the consignees’ warehouse, they still had difficulty in returning the empty containers back to the ports because the shipping companies had not done the needful.
He continued,”The shipping companies have turned our ports to warehouse for empty containers and I know there is a law that says that if a vessel is berthing and discharged a number of containers, such a vessel must take the equal number of containers back to abroad but I is not done because nobody is monitoring them and that is why I am happy now that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, with this ruling maybe able to monitor this process.
“2016 is better than 2017, whether in the area of revenue generation or in the area of operations in the ports because everything is spoiling on daily basis, the facilities are in a state of dilapidation. Our road has been bad but it is worse this year, the economy was bad but it has been worse this year, the level of operation was bad but it is worse this year and there is no encouragement”.
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