By Ifeyinwa Obi

Lagos—Management of the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, has blamed the Nigerian ports poor performance on government’s harsh policies.

In a recent 2013 scorecard released by the blue-chip parastatal, the Managing Director, Mallam Habib Abdullahi, blamed government’s fiscal measures that restricted some imports into the country and other sundry factors as the Authority’s operational bane.

In the 2013 ports’ performance report signed on his behalf by the Assistant General Manager, AGM, Public Affairs, Mallam Musa Iliya, he said market forces were part of factors that limited the activities of the NPA in the year under review.

According to him, “recent research revealed that, generally, each port is being shaped by the market forces dictated by the commodity demand and by the particular port user.
“The decline experienced in some products can be linked to general economic factor.”

In dry bulk, for instance, he explained that there was ban on the importation of cement, lamenting that this, coupled with the increase in rice tariff had reduced the importation of the commodity to the country through Nigerian ports, but through smuggling by other routes.

He said: “The European debt crises gave birth to the decrease in Liquefied Natural Gas, many of their industries have closed down, and so the demand for our product was low. They have also discovered an alternative means of production in the Middle East.”