The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has warned that this is not a good time to impose all manner of charges on port users in the nation’s maritime industry.
The Director-General of LCCI, Mr. Muda Yusuf who gave this warning in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos while reacting to the Peak Season Surcharge on Nigerian bound cargoes by the shipping companies and the passage fee imposed on vessels by the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) said that this was a wrong timing as “the economy is going through a lot of challenges, businesses are going through a lot of challenges and many of them are struggling to be in business”.
Yusuf stated that the Shippers’ Council needed to also live up to its responsibility even as he added that part of the reasons they celebrated the appointment of Shippers’ Council as the economic regulator was that it would be able to protect the interest of the stakeholders in the maritime industry.
“So, the first challenge indeed to the Shippers’ Council is to see how to prevail on all these institutions to ensure that you don’t further exacerbate the challenges of the cost of doing business because all this issue of ease of doing business that you have been talking about, it is about operating cost, it is about cost of operation, it is about charges from regulatory agencies, it is about charges from some of these government agencies.
“So, the Shippers’ Council has a major role to play and those of us who are major stakeholders also have a major responsibility in terms of advocacy. Some of these things am also just hearing for the first time. If we have the fact, we will escalate it to the appropriate authorities so that you don’t just allow people to impose anything. There should be a framework to regulate a kind of charges that people impose on business otherwise if you live it open, there will be a lot of exploitations and as a business association, we have to do a lot more to make sure we curb such practices”, he observed.
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