Former Executive Secretary (ES) of the Nigerian Shippers Council, Hassan Bello, has said that Nigeria is losing a sum of $9.2bn annually to foreign shipping lines, which are handling cargo that a national fleet is supposed to handle.
Bello, who disclosed this on Friday at the inauguration of the new executives of the Ship-owners Association of Nigeria in Lagos, maintained that the national fleet should be an initiative of the private sector.
$9.2bn lost annually to foreigners. This is trade that goes to foreign-owned shipping companies or carriers. You could imagine what that could do to our economy if we had a national fleet. The national fleet should be an initiative of the private sector but the Government should encourage it, Bello said.
Bello further stated that all the earnings that were supposed to come to Nigeria now go to foreigners, creating employment for them. He reiterated the importance of having indigenous participation in international trade.
The former Shippers Council’s executive secretary lamented that Nigeria operated a mono-economy, wholly dependent on the export of a single commodity, which is crude oil.
We have to own and operate indigenous tonnage, purely private sector-driven, by providing incentives that are the function of a government-friendly operating climate, like tax holidays, and a wide range of very important incentives, which other countries have used. We have no time to do that. We are talking about tax holidays. We are talking about fiscal policies, legal, and the policy changes, he stated.
Also, the immediate-past President of the SOAN, McGeorge Onyung, expressed disappointment that Nigeria was not capitalising on the $14trillion ocean economy.
Onyung, who is also the Managing Director of Jevkon Oil & Gas, declared that by ferrying equipment and materials needed for the Lagos-Calabar rail line project from China, Nigeria inadvertently enriched Chinese ship-owners instead of retaining that freight money within the country.
Also, the new President of SOAN, Sonny Eja, lamented that poor ship acquisition was affecting the nations maritime sector.
He, however, said the association would work together to navigate the complexities of a rapidly evolving landscape and surmount the multi-faceted issues plaguing shipping, especially, ship acquisition.
