Worried by the delay in cargo clearance at the nation’s seaports, terminal operators have expressed willingness to provide functional scanners to drive seamless cargo examination and enhanced efficiency service delivery at the port.
This is owing to the fact that lack of functional scanners at the ports has resulted to 100 percent manual inspection of goods as well as payment of high demurrage and storage charges by importers.
Bolaji Akinola, spokesperson of Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN), gave this indication while speaking on the theme ‘Port Economics: Are Nigerian Ports Expensive?’, as a guest on an online programme by Maritime TV called Live Conversations.
Though, the provision and management of scanners fall under the purview of Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Akinola said terminal operators had the capacity to provide scanners if engaged for such services by the Federal Government.
“If the government wants terminal operators to provide scanners, the operators can provide quality scanners but that would be a different arrangement entirely. Terminal operators can provide and manage functional scanners for the nation but that is not part of the current responsibility of the port concenssionaires,” he said.
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According to Akinola, the absence of functional scanners at the nation’s ports and its consequent 100 percent physical examination of cargoes by Customs officials have thwarted gains of the government’s Ease of Doing Business agenda.
“It is unfortunate that scanners brought in by the destination inspection service providers have all packed up. However, it falls under Customs purview and they seem happy carrying out 100 percent physical examination, which results in delayed cargo clearing at ports and increase the cost of demurrage as well as storage charges. It is important to note that this physical inspection is against the Ease of Doing Business agenda the government is promoting,” Akinola said.
On cost of doing business at the port, Akinola, who decried the impact of multiple Customs checkpoints and interception of already released cargoes, said that Customs import charges account for 70 percent of the total Nigerian port charges in cargo evacuation.
He further listed cost of shipment or freight cost, trucking cost and Customs duties as the three major issues that result to high cost of doing business in Nigerian ports.
“The freight cost to Nigeria from Europe or China is one of the highest in the region. It is cheaper to get a consignment from China to Ghana, than China to Nigeria. When you drill further, you would find the issues responsible for this high cost. Unfortunately, most people have refused to take cognizance of the issues which were also highlighted by a recent study conducted by Lloyds,” Akinola said.
Continuing, he said, “The cost of trucking is also too expensive. It has become more alarming in recent times, especially in the last two years. It is cheaper to move a container from China to Nigeria than to move that container from the ports to warehouses in Lagos. The cost of trucking has gone up about five times within the last two years by over 500 percent. This high cost of trucking is a function of the dilapidated port access roads.”
Collaborating this, Obiora Madu, director general of Multimix Academy, said recently at a different time that challenges in the logistics supply chain increases cost for imports and agro-export that leaves Nigeria to the international market, which limits the nation’s competitiveness.
He said it was cheaper for a shipper to bring a container from China to Tin-Can Island Port in Lagos, than to move that same container from Tin-Can to Ogba in Ikeja due to the clog in the wheel of the nation’s logistics supply chain.
He however added that effective utilisation of the rail system in the evacuation of cargoes would go a long way in making imports and exports more competitive.
