From Business Day

Analysts reviewing the maritime industry in the past year and predicting the outlook for 2014, foresee that  Nigerian ports will witness a drastic drops in the number of vessels  bringing  in cargoes.

The implication they say, is that the volume of importation into the country will also witness a significant drop, as importers of containerized goods, vehicles and other products will likely divert a larger chunk of their cargoes to neighboring ports of Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana.

The analysts blame this on the bureaucratic bottlenecks  brought about by the Nigerian Customs department, which end up delaying cargo clearing. The delays, which became alarming in the past weeks, since the Destination Inspection service providers handed over that responsibility to the Customs service, have created  a huge backlog of un-cleared cargoes as well as heavy congestion in the ports.

According to analysts, policy inconsistency, which has increased the import duties paid on commodities like vehicles and rice, will also result to massive cargo diversion, including low importation of cars and rice in the country.

“There is high expectation that port business will boom in 2014, but with the newly introduced fiscal policy on automotives, which raised the percentage of tariff paid on imported vehicles from 20 to 70 percent, I see Nigerian cargoes being diverted to ports in the neighoring countries where it is cheaper to clear and bring in goods through the land borders”, said Tony Anakebe, managing director of Gold-Link Investment Limited, a clearing and forwarding company.

“If the problems already created by the new Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) that was introduced recently by Nigerian Customs Service are not handled in earnest, I also see a situation where Nigerian ports may lose some of their cargoes to other ports in the first and second quarters of this year,” he further predicted.

Read more at Business Day