By Uzor Odigbo
The Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) said that the nation recorded a whooping N3.9 billion in the last quarter of 2017, as a way of intervention through exportation of Nigerian commodities.
The council said that the figure was obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in it recent analysis.
The Executive Secretary of the Council, Hassan Bello said this on Saturday at the first anniversary lectures and honours organised by Searchlight Media Concept in Lagos.
The Executive Secretary, who spoke on the topic: The Role of Ports Economic Regulator in Promoting Experts Trade in Nigeria, added that export trade recorded zero rejection in the same year despite increase in trade.
Bello was represented at the event by the Director Special Duty ,Ignatius Nweke, pointed out that the recorded value of the fourth quarter of 2017 , grew by 9.35 percent over third quarter of same year and 31.27 percent increase over same period in the previous year.
He added that agricultural exports grew in value by 54.9 percent in fourth quarter of 2017 amounting to N44.7 billion compared to N16.5 billion in the same period in 2016.
Raw materials in fourth quarter in 2017 were 71.7 percent more in value than fourth quarter of 2916.
Solid minerals, manufactured goods exports recorded N309.25 billion in fourth quarter of 2017 while Crude oil and other oil products grew over the 2016 export figure by 57.6 percent and 57.75 percent respectively.
According to him, the increases recorded in export trade was made possible by the intervention of the Council in promoting export trade.
On what the Council is doing on the cost of trucking that has risen by 600 percent, he said that the Council had been meeting with relevant stakeholders on reducing the cost.
He stressed that truck operators harped on the bad state of the road to increase their cost saying that the council had promised to revert to the former charge when the roads are fixed.
In his words: “Each time you have meeting on this, the truck operator will always tell you he didn’t increase because he wanted to increase.
In his words: “Each time you have meeting on this, the truck operator will always tell you he didn’t increase because he wanted to increase.
“First, he will tell you that the roads are bad and will tell you that if you fix the roads, he will reduce the cost but the meetings have continued to see that we have a reasonable price.”