7 April 2008
Lagos — Mr Solomon Onafowokan, the President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), weekend in Lagos urged government to effectively implement its strategies at reforming the ports.
The areas of concern are the multiplicity of government agencies, the partial implementation of Customs' reforms, especially on computerisation and the poor capacity for import and export documentation in banks. "Government intervened on a number of occasions to address some of these concerns, but for some reasons, these interventions were either not sustained or were unsustainable," he said at LCCI's First Quarterly Business Luncheon of the chamber.
He said that multiplicity of agencies at the ports caused unnecessary delays while exporters to paid more to process documents. He said that the computerisation component meant to improve the speed of documentation had not been effective as transactions were done manually.
He said that the weak capacity in some banks on imports and exports documentation slowed down the release of goods, "Effective transactions at the ports is very important to drive the nation's economic growth," he remarked.
Mr Tom Knudsen, the Managing Director of Maersk Nigeria who spoke on the topic, "Containerised Trade to Nigeria: Obstacles and Opportunities," said that inadequate roads and electricity were the greatest obstacles facing operations at the ports. He said that although the concession of the ports had eased congestion, transportation was still a problem.
"It is impossible getting trucks to evacuate goods because of traffic hold ups on ports' roads and this is getting worse by the day," Knusden said. He called on the government to intensify efforts at reviving the rail system.
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