… hinders seamless cargo clearance as dwell time hits 21days
Following the inability of the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to appoint members of his cabinet whom are expected to take the responsibility of championing the course of the various sectors of the economy, some of the multiple government agencies sacked from the ports by the immediate past government are beginning to find their way back to the seaports, BusinessDay has learnt.
Consequently, the development has made cargo clearance at the ports to become very cumbersome for Nigerian importers and their agents, owing to delays emanating from the involvement of these agencies in cargo clearance.
The dwell time of cargo, which was formerly brought down to 14 days, has risen to a minimum of 21 days, meaning that it takes an importer an average of 21 days to take delivery of cargo.
Alarmingly, it has also resulted to high cost of doing business at the ports as importers are expected to pay corresponding storage and demurrage charges to terminal operators and shipping companies for not taken delivery of their cargoes as of when due, and this by estimate runs into millions of naira.
“The Buhari-led administration is yet to take decision on whom to be in charge of the various sectors of the economy by way of appointing ministers, and this is why many of the sacked government agencies at the port are trooping back to the port,” Tony Anakebe, a maritime analyst, told BusinessDay.
Citing instance, Anakebe said among the sacked government agencies from the port, Plant and Animal Quarantine, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), while Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) were said to be hanging around the port intercepting cleared containers at the port gates.
Recall that in 2011, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former minister of finance, trimmed down government agencies operating at the ports to seven, asking agencies like SON, NAFDAC, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and six others to leave the port only to be called upon by Customs when their services were needed.
To the Federal Government, the action is in line with the ongoing port reforms aimed at reducing cargo dwell time to at least 14 days, stop extortion and corruption, achieve faster turnaround time and reduce the cost of doing business at the ports.
Confirming this, Vicky Haastrup, chairman, Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN), who in a statement sent to BusinessDay recently, calling for the reduction of the number of government agencies operating at the ports, also said the reduction would help in streamlining the clearing processes so as to reduce cargo dwell time.
Leke Oyewole, former senior special adviser to president on maritime matters, said recently that the presence of multiple government agencies at port had created undue delays in cargo clearance, which resulted to high storage and demurrage charges paid to shipping companies and terminal operators, saying “most times, the turnaround time of ships becomes high and this is not good enough for Nigerian economy because the costs would be transferred on the end users of the products by way of high prices of goods at the market. Therefore, government agencies need to collaborate with each other for Nigerian ports to be efficiency.”
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
