By Obiabin Onukwugha, Port Harcourt
Former Chairman of Export Group of the Nigerian Association of Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) Barr Kola Awe has called for the scrapping of export levies on agricultural products and collection of registration charges to Domestic Export Warehouses (DEWs) in Nigeria.
Awe, who is Chief Executive Officer of XPT Logistics also regretted that Nigerian ports are still far from being paperless.
Barr Awe spoke at an event tagged “Multi-agency Stakeholders Enlightenment on Key Reforms of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council under the National Action Plan 7.0 on Agro-Export”, recently.
He said Nigerian export procedure and documentation process was extremely complex and needs to be broken down. He cited an example where for an exporter to perfect his documentation, he is mandated to visit numerous government agencies with offices in Ikaja, Apapa, Ijora and various offices scattered around Lagos.
He said: “Our ports are not yet paperless. Once you make something difficult to approach or accomplish, freight forwarders will always look for way out.
“The SOP on export says that all exports must originate from export warehouses, but today, 80percent of export do not originate from these warehouses.
“Everything that needs to be done must be perfected at the warehouses, if exporters abide by these SOP, there is no way we would be having the rejects that we are having today.
“There is an imposition of export levy of $5 for five different cargoes; Cocoa, Ginger, Cotton and Rubber. Every other one is $15. Also, the cost of registering to the warehouses should be made lower so that exporters can be encouraged to go into that place”, he said
Awe highlighted the need for government to Deploy technology into the port process, stressing, “Deploying technology in Nigeria is war, there are shipping lines today that you cannot go inside, they would tell you to go and send it by mail, yet the container is there accruing demurrage because it takes them days to respond to the mail.
“As long as shipping lines continue like this, we can never improve exportation, the shipping companies are the Chief Chairman of Arbitrary charges.”