The Nigerian Shippers' Council, NSC, in collaboration with sister agencies of the Federal Government, such as the Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Commission, NIMASA, are working on controlling cost of freighting cargoes to Nigeria as well as through the hinterland.

Addressing the media and the shipping stakeholders in Lagos the Executive Secretary of the Council and its chief executive officer, Barrister Akuta Pius Ukeyima, said he has been addressing the issues associated with rising cost of operations in the industry coming at the backdrop of exchange rate induced inflation.

He also related the costs to war risk freight charges by foreign shipping companies which, according to him, made freight cost to Nigeria's ports far higher than other West African ports.

He stated: "We have looked at the issue of insurance costs, and we said, for instance, a ship leaving Shanghai Port in China coming to Nigeria takes about 28 days to get into Nigeria. It takes about 34 days to get to Tema port in Ghana.

But the cost of coming to Nigeria is about $3,150, whereas that of Tema port is $2,150, a difference of $1,000, and this has been attributable to the cost of insurance.

"Now we are saying that why should you give us a cost of insurance of that much when you're talking about security issues, and it is the same channel to come into the two ports, the same channel to go back, the same body of waters. "So we have had discussions with the NIMASA to look at how we can deal with this issue of war zone insurance premium in terms of the additional cost of freight.

The Director General of NIMASA is also working seriously with the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to see how we can take this cost down and lower it effectively".

Speaking on other cost of shipments Ukeyima said, "the pressure that the USDollar has given to Naira has made a lot of things to go up and we are trying to manage the situation to ensure that we don't continue to change and add additional costs for instance for the haulage business.

"At the end of the day, the haulage business may not be able to have the cargo to pick if the cost is too much for cargo to come in.

"So we are trying to regulate those costs to ensure that at the end of the day, the cost is being shared across board so that nobody is killing the other part of the sector. So that everyone is still working together to see how we can come out of this inflation".