Nigerian shippers may have moved their businesses out of the Nigerian ports due to complaints of high cost of doing business.
This include unnecessary bureaucracy posed by several government agencies operating in the port, extortion among other vices, shippers have given conditions for their return to Nigerian ports.
They have therefore, called on the Federal Government to provide incentives that will lure the shippers back to Nigerian ports.
Amomg some of the demands of the shippers include reducing the number of agencies operating in the ports to avoid ambiguous cargo clearing process as well as addressing the issue of bad roads leading to the port.
Others are; giving special status to the shippers in the port because of their decades of contributions to the economic growth of the country.
The president of Shippers Association Lagos State (SALS), Rev’d Jonathan Nicol noted that the shippers who have been contributing to the economic development of the country for the past four decades deserve a special recognition and incentives as stakeholders in the port.
Asked to give details of the incentives, Nicol said that the government should compel shipping companies to give importers minimum of 41 days grace to clear their consignments before slamming them with demurrage charges.
He added that terminal operators should collect their charges in local currency instead of in dollars as well as stop all the extortions by different uniform security agents in the port.
“We need a lot of incentives, government should make us one of the bonafide stakeholders on the port because we have been contributing to the economy of this country for over 3 to 4 decades.
“All the agencies in the poet should remove their price tags they charge before carrying out their statutory assignments.
“We are overdue for all the agencies working in the port to give us concession and also to help solve problems in the port rather than creating them,” he stated.
He however said SALS supported the recent presidential order given by the Acting President on 24 hours clearing process in the port but added tat the bad state of the port roads could be a hinderance to the success of the laudable initiative.
The SALS chieftain who decried the sudden rise in the cost of doing business in the port, made reference to the increase in movement of cargoes within and outside the state.
He said that consignments within Lagos which used to cost about eighty thousand naira, now attracts about one hundred and sixty thousand naira.
