The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), has contributed a total of N151 billion to the Consolidated Revenue Account (CRA) of the Federal Government in the last four years, 2017-2020.
Hadiza Bala- Usman, managing director of the NPA, who stated this in Lagos recently during a virtual conversation with newsmen, said NPA contributed N42 billion in 2017, N33 billion in 2018, N31 billion in 2019 and N45 billion in 2020.
According to her, the cargo throughput for 2019 was 80 million metric tons across all the seaports in the whole country including Apapa, Tin-can Island, Onne, Calabar, Rivers and Warri Ports while in 2020, Nigerian ports the volume of cargo dropped to 78 million metric tons. “So, we can see the difference in how much we were able to attract into the country within that period and the differential.”
“In terms of container traffic, Nigerian ports recorded about 1.84 million twenty-foot Equivalent Units ( TEUS) in 2019 and 1.86 million in 2020 while the number of ships that called the nation’s seaports stood at 4,251 in 2019 and 3,972 in 2020. Gross registered tonnage for the vessels stood at 29.4 million metric tons in 2019 and 24.6 million metric tons in 2020. This shows a marginal drop because of Covid-19 pandemic and we even thought it would be less but it is not materially different,” Usman said.
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The Tin-can Island Port, she said, had the highest number of vessels of 1,197 vessels while Apapa port recorded 986 vessels within that period.
In terms of revenue generation, Usman said, the authority recorded a total revenue of N305.31 billion in 2019 and N350.37 billion 2020.
She disclosed that the contribution of the agency into the Consolidated Revenue Account is in line with the fiscal responsibility act which requires all government agencies to make remittance of surplus into the government coffers.
“Ensuring strict compliance to that is what we have sworn to do, which is to meet the full compliance to the provisions of Fiscal Responsibility Act. So, this is the general overview of what we have been doing and our area of focus,” she said.
She however noted that one of the key issues that have been bedeviling the NPA’S operations within the Lagos area has been the traffic congestion in Apapa and Tin-can Island.
