Acting President, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Dr Kayode Farinto, has said that the country’s ports have witnessed a decline in cargo volume in the past 24 months.
He made this known in a television programme monitored by the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday in Lagos.
He was speaking on the Nigerian Ports Authority report in first half of the year which showed a total of 849,000 Twenty-foot equivalent unit of container rise on import received in Nigerian ports.
According to Farinto, a lot of factors militate against cargo import in Nigeria such as bureaucracy, inconsistent policies and the continuous slide of the naira.
“The role of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) too cannot be over looked and this is because, they are encroaching on fiscal policy which affect importation of cargo.
“We have over 48 items on forex prohibition list and these people are still going through black market, bringing these items is a problem and even when brought in, issues of declaration comes in.
“…I will say that 40 per cent of the containers are raw materials from all these multinationals and producing companies like Nigerian Breweries,” he said.
The ANLCA acting president said that to address this, government needs to look into the country’s maritime policy to have a clear cut way of harnessing the industry, which is under tapped.
