How Nigeria lost $25bn to foreign ship owners in 3 yrs – Shippers Council
The Executive Secretary of Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC), Mr Hassan Bello, said on Friday that Nigeria lost 25 billion dollars to foreign ship owners between 2015 and 2017.
Bello
disclosed this when the Nigerian Fleet Implementation Committee paid a courtesy
visit to the Minister of Budget and Planning in Abuja Sen. Udoma Udoma.
Bello said
that over $9.08 was paid as freight for dry and wet cargos to foreign ship
owners in 2015 due to the absence of Nigerian-owned fleet plying the
international route.
The NSC boss
said that the trend had been recurring over the years till date adding that in
2016, over $7.55 billion dollars was estimated as opportunity loss.
According to
him, $8.60 billion was freight opportunity loss from import and export of dry
and wet cargos in 2017.
“As a result
of this the Federal Ministry of Transportation through the Minister of
Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, set up a committee for the Nigerian fleet
implementation,“ he said
He said that
the committee was to examine the possibility of using existing shipping
companies to run a Nigerian fleet and provide guidelines on procedures of
establishing a shipping company.
Bello said
that for government to realise its programme, a conducive environment backed by
strong political will with incentives to operators, had to be in place.
He said that
the ministry of budget and planning played an important role in fiscal policy
direction of government..
Speaking,
Udoma Udoma said that the ministry of budget and planning would work with
relevant agencies to resolve the issues and support the committee fully.
“We will
work with the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Trade as well as the
Ministry of Finance to try and ensure that we address those issues; it is
important that your work succeed.
“It is very
important because firstly there is need for this country to generate more
revenue; there is the need to see if we can expand the Nigeria fleet, the work
and the cargoes that they carry.
“We will be
saving ourselves foreign exchange and we would be able to generate funds in
foreign exchange as well. So it is very important to create an expansion for
Nigerian fleet.
“We would
also be creating jobs for Nigerians. When we expand the fleet we would also be
expanding our transport infrastructure; you can be sure of our strong active
support from this ministry,” he said.
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