Yunus Abdulhamid
18 November 2008
The Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Mrs. Irene Chigbue, has blamed the congestion at the ports on too many government agencies operating all at the same time. According to her, the congestion at the port "is not due to the terminal operators.
The congestion is due to a cocktail of factors, the principal being the over twenty government agencies operating at the ports." Chigbue made the observation at a two-day World Bank Privatisation Support Project (PSP) Stakeholders Workshop which began yesterday in Abuja. She noted that when the BPE undertook study tours of successful ports in other climes, there was no country with such plethora of agencies at ports. Said Chigbue: "The programme has achieved many of its set goals and has effectively brought both financial and institutional support to the key agencies that were charged with implementing various government programmes. At this point in the life of the PSP, when most of the key performance indicators are clearly on track, it is appropriate to reinvigorate the process through a reassessment and prioritization of the intervention necessary to consolidate on the achievements made so far. "The workshop will provide opportunity for stakeholders to buy into the Key Performance Indicators expected for the consolidation of the PSP achievements and present these and other 'capacity-building agenda' to the Federal Government PSP Oversight Committee, obtain feedback and confirm targets over the next 12 months." The BPE boss noted that the foundation work for the government to embrace Public-Private Partnership (PPP) was done by the privatization agency. "We are excited because if the groundwork was not done, we cannot talk of PPP. No investor will partner with the public sector if they did not see the legal/regulatory framework," she stated.
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