The Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) has advocated for the establishment of a one stop shop in the maritime industry in the West African sub-region so as to increase the ease of doing business as well as get all the service providers to come together in order to eliminate unnecessary delays which in turn leads to demurrage accruals.
The Executive Director (Commercial) of PPMC, Engr. Billy Okoye who stated this in a panel discussion at the just concluded OTL Africa Downstream Week I held in Lagos also harped on the need to create free trade zones for the maritime industry in the West Africa which according to him would also assist a lot.
Okoye believed that when this is done, it would foster enough innovation and deepen technology sharing among the maritime industry adding that it was the core of the company to have those two in place; create a one stop shop and then develop the free trade zones.
“I mean in West Africa, we are one and when we do this, we will be able to facilitate trade and commerce across the region, we will be able to generate revenues, create employment for our teeming unemployed people in West Africa, we will be able to enhance industrial trade and development, international relations and peaceful co-existence amongst West African maritime players and it will also improve efficiency and productivity for the oil and gas industry”, he said.
While acknowledging the fact that Nigeria has cargo, he quickly opined that Nigeria did not have enough vessels to carry the cargo that it generated saying that the shipowners should be in a better position to tell whether they have the vessels to move almost 60 million litres of PMS imported into the country to Calabar, Port-Harcourt and other parts of the country from offshore Lagos and not just to come to Lagos.
On the issue of whether there are maritime clusters in West Africa, the Executive Director observed that there were but was quick to add that the issue was how to harness and improve on the opportunities inherent in them.
In his words,” And my answer is, there is need for us to create a one stop shop for a particular maritime region. If we are able to do this, then the question of whether we have maritime clusters in West Africa will not even arise. If we are able to do this, get the various Naval commands in all the West Africa sub-region together, get our own NIMASA and the other Maritime Administrations in Ghana and all those places together, get the Port Authorities together, I think that that will develop and improve the maritime industry because we will now be able to do everything in one stop, we will now be able to do all the registrations, all the clearances.
“Now, in Nigeria for example, you go to Navy to get one clearance, you go to NPA, by the time you finish all this clearances, your demurrage is very much on the increase and in PPMC, we aim to have zero demurrage because these demurrage don’t do any good to Nigerians. These demurrages, we pay them to foreign vessel owners, if we pay them to Nigerian vessel owners, we will say okay, at least we are contributing to the Nigerian economy. But if they are being exported, so, for us, anything that will incur demurrage is a no for us.
“So, we are thinking about creating a one stop shop to the West African maritime region to increase the ease of doing business, where ships are berthed, all this insurance brokers and service providers will come together and we also think that creating a free trade zone for the maritime industry in the West Africa will also assist a lot”.
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