The House of Representatives has disclosed that, poor Ports operations has been a bane on Nigeria’s economic growth in the last six years.
Chairman, House Committee on Customs, Leke Abejide (APC,Kogi) disclosed this in an opening remark at an interactive session with the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Nigerian Shipper Council, Terminal operators and other stakeholders in the Maritime and import export sector of the economy on Tuesday.
He said, the essence of the meeting is to see how government agencies and other stakeholders will work towards making Nigerian Ports competitive to correct wrong procedures responsible for the avoidable congestions which has become an economic headache and stalling development.
“Bonded containers that are supposed to be dropped at sea side by the shipping lines are not being allocated to another Bonded Terminals together with other containers for the said Bonded Terminals to take the whole vessel loads to its Terminal first on the cost of the importers before the Bonded Terminal which is the final destination pick the container to their Terminal.
“Apart from the cost which is abnormal and triple, there is time consumption which lead to delays make nonsense of the FGN policy of Ease of Doing Business,” he said.
He said, the Shippers Council should tell the committee what it is doing to monitor the excesses of all the Shipping Lines in trying to kill the Export business by leaving Export full containers at the Ports and load empty containers for juicy import freight that are in the range of $17,000 per container.
According to him, the Shippers knew that, an import is a leakage to the economy while export is an injection into the economy.
“It is equally important for Nigeria Shippers Council to tell this Committee the sanctions that will be meted on the Shipping Lines refusing to refund containers deposit immediately their empty containers are returned even with the evidence from INTERCHANGE showing the date and time such empty containers were returned to them.
“There are cases of 1 year, 6 months, 4 months, etc. that empty containers were returned yet no refund the excuses the shipping companies usually give is they are processing but when they want to collect they don’t process that long.
“| think there should be a Law stipulating penalty for default on the part of those erring shipping lines like paying 150% of the amount deposited if deposit is not refunded within 3 days their empty is returned to them,” he added.
Abejide also challenges NPA to explain why Terminal Operators are allowed to give fewer free days, like 5 days, for Export to Gate-in knowing fully well that in advanced countries there are in some cases 21 free days.
The Committee chairman also noted that, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) cannot trust their well organised Commands that have Area Controllers, Deputy Controllers Admin, D/C Revenue, DC Enforcement, many Assistant Controllers with containers going to Bonded Terminals unless cumbersome clearing procedures are done.
“In actual fact the same clearing procedures will be done at Final Destination with full Customs organs present and other Agencies such as SS, Police Antibomb, SON, NAFDAC etc,” he added.
The various agencies of government and other stakeholders present at the interactive session in their various responses and submissions before the committee blamed various factors responsible for the challenges facing the operations of the ports over the years.
They blamed lack of infrastructure and other operational bottlenecks as responsible for the poor operations of Nigerian ports.
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