The Managing Director, Oceanblocks Limited, Oluwole Awonuga has said that the Merchant Shipping Act otherwise known as the Cabotage Act has not encouraged the indigenous practitioners in the nation’s maritime industry.
Speaking in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos, Awonuga said that this was true as all the vessels operating on the Nigerian coastal waters were foreign vessels.
He observed that the fees charged by maritime agencies in charge of shipping in this case the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) was also a disincentive to the indigenous operators as no bank in Nigeria would give the kind of money they charge as loan.
” The Cabotage law is not encouraging the indigenous practitioners because all the vessels operating on the Nigerian coasts are foreign vessels. I will bring in a vessel and you will tell me I should come and bring N50 million to N60 million, how many banks will borrow you that kind of money?”, he queried.
He suggested that government could spread the duty payment by indigenous ship owners to a period of up to 10 years so as to encourage them remain afloat even as he wondered how many indigenous ship owners could afford to commit about N100 million in shipping.
He further advocated that all those who engage in temporary importation should be made to spread their duty payment over a period of 2 years per transaction even as he posited that with the current trend, government was making it so difficult that indigenous operators were non existent.
On the proposed new national carrier by the federal government, Awonuga stated that he believed in the current approach adopted by the government to refloat the national carrier describing it as a welcomed development.
According to him,” The problem NNSL had is because was that everybody saw NNSL as a government owned vessels that if you are working there, you just go there and d your own trade. Anytime NNSL wants to come to Apapa, you see everybody wanting to buy fridge, coolers, television and so on. Some people see these vessels as commercial venture that anybody working there is going abroad to bring his personal goods to come and sell.
“What I want to subscribe to is that if government wants to build any national carrier now, it should not do it alone. I suggest that the federal government should have 40% of the shares while the foreign investors will have 60%”.
The Oceanblock MD believed that with a new national carrier, all the demurrages that were going out in Dollars would be in Naira as they would remain in this country adding that those were the expectations of the cabotage.
“If it is cabotage, it means those vessels are Nigerian owned, you don’t need to pay anybody in Dollars, you pay in Naira. But now all the vessels are foreign owned and any demurrage has to go into Dollars and those are part of the drains Nigeria is experiencing.
“That is why I support the national carrier because if it is national carrier, you now pay freight rates in Naira, if we have national carrier, it will reduce capital flight”, he said.
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