The Shippers` Association Lagos State on Tuesday said 50 per cent of cargoes meant for Nigerian ports were being diverted to Cotonou port as a result of the Central Bank `s forex restriction on some imported items.

The President of the association, Mr Jonathan Nicol made the disclosure while speaking in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

He said that many Nigerian shippers had diverted their cargoes to the ports in the Republic of Benin since the policy started, adding that there were less restrictions on imports in the West African country.

Nicol said the development had deprived Nigeria a lot of revenue, urging the Federal Government to ease the policy to boost revenue.

“When the CBN forex restriction policy came into being, we appealed to the Federal Government to review the policy and remove some critical items because it is hurting our business and the country`s revenue.

“The reflection of that restriction is beginning to show up because we are having fewer cargoes in our ports.

“Rather than shippers bringing their cargoes to Lagos, they prefer Cotonou and they do their foreign transactions there because Benin Republic does not have such restrictions as we have.

“In fact our country have been depleting in cargoes to the extent that we have lost 50 per cent cargoes to the Republic of Benin, helping to make the Cotonou ports the largest in West Africa.

“The Federal Government should kindly remove some critical items from the list to boost shipping business in the country and attract revenue to the country“ he told NAN.

Nicol decried what he called the incursion of foreign shipping lines into the freight forwarding business in the country, saying the development was not good for the economy.

“If foreigners with better resources and expertise are allowed to intrude into the business, it might render no fewer than 100,000 Nigerian freight forwarders jobless.

“We do not understand why a foreigner will suddenly come from nowhere, claiming to be a Nigerian company and make incursion into the freight forwarding business.

“Many Nigerians are engaged in this area and we think we might lose about 100,000 jobs to this problem.

“The Federal Government has a Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) and the mandate of the council is to train freight forwarders on the best standards.

“Since we have people who can do this job locally, I do not think we should tolerate foreigners.

“The government should ensure the business is reserved for our people to protect their jobs, “ the shipper said.

He also urged Nigerians who backed the foreigners dominating the local freight forwarding business to have a rethink.

lilprinze:
Ever since this dullard has been president nothing good comes happnes in this country again only bad and negative news.

clintwine:
It is not necessarily a bad development, its actually a good one and working
It means that Imports are almost halving, now we can look at increasing our exports and boosting our economy with locally made things
It is silly that we were importing toothpicks

we should be looking at 50% reduction in imports and 50% increase in exports
that way we would have a stronger economy and stop depleting the foreign reserves

now that we know the items are being diverted to Cotonou, the government should deploy more custom officers towards that border
and make sure that we get every revenue from legal items coming in from that end
every illegal item should be confiscated and sent to IDP camps and displaced people, then the rest auctioned to families with less than a certain household income

Change means that we have to adjust and make some scarifies for the betterment of our collective tomorrow, nobody said it will be easy
Let us start thinking of what we can export and sell,

Before someone says locally made items are sub-standard,
we said that about Chinese items many years ago, now see how strong they have grown and the quality of items they are producing

raayah:
If possible futher restrictions should apply. We don't need to import some certain things. We need our manufacturing industry to grow.

It's either the business men find other things to import or start another business.

jmichlins:
To make omlet you break egg. To be able to get nigeria on the right track the government need to move it from the wrong track. some will bear the pain unfortunately

raayah:
If possible futher restrictions should apply. We don't need to import some certain things. We need our manufacturing industry to grow.

It's either the business men find other things to import or start another business.