By Franklin Alli
The Task Force on Trade Facilitation Federal Ministry of Commerce & Industry, has discovered that importers in the country have turned the Lagos Ports Complex (Apapa and Tincan Island) into their warehouse.

They also found out that there are 24 government agencies currently operating at the ports “some are illegal”; again 82 percent of cargoes coming into the country from various destination leaves the country empty with export commodities accountings for only 28 per cent or 1.8%.

These findings were dig up this week, following an on the spot assessment carried out by the Task Force, headed by Acting Director, Department of Trade, Mr. David Adejuwon.

Commercial & Business Development Manager, APM Terminals, Koen Baccker, observed that some importers have turned the ports complex into a warehouse.

“Some containers have been here for over a year, thus obstructing movement of cargoes in and out of the port,” he said.

“Out of every 10 containers that comes into the country, only 1.8 per cent get filled with non-oil export items, while 8.2 percent leaves empty to their country of origin,” he further disclosed, stressing that the country’s still heavily import dependent.

Spokesperson for Greenview Development Nigeria Ltd; a subsidiary of Dangote Group; the operator of Terminal E, Mr. David Agunbiade, also told the Task Force that another hindrance to the delay of cargoes and service delivery is the presence of 24 agencies from the government.

Comptroller, Nigeria Customs Services Area 1 Command, Apapa, Abdulkadir Azarema, who led the Team round the ASSYCUDA++ to see the processes for clearance of goods, and how long it takes to get a container cleared from the ports, tabled 22 operational challenges causing delay in the clearance process by Customs.

“Some importers do not comply with import guidelines and they(importers) make frequent requests to change their agencies during transactions, there is difficulty in modifying or cancelling an assessed declaration which is wrongly imputed by Direct Trader Input(DTI) operators and their customer-agents, inadequate berthing space for bulk cargo vessels , epileptic performance of the e- payment system when the Orion between the service provider(Inter Switch) to banks and Customs fail to come up thereby stalling operation as paid duties are not quickly transmitted by designated banks to Customs server, the present scanning machines are not enough and breakdown of rickety haulage trucks at the scanning site thus, delaying the clearance process, etc” said Azarema.