Reforms in the Nigerian maritime sector have been kick-started. The minister of finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, yesterday reduced agencies at the nation’s seaports to six, cutting off eight from having any permanent presence at the ports.
This is coming just as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)yesterday raised lending rate by 275 basis points from 9.25 per cent to 12.0 per cent, a decision the apex bank said would strengthen the naira.
According to the finance minister, the six agencies which services at the ports are critical and inevitable on a daily basis include the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), the Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), the Port Health and the State Security Service (SSS).
The finance minister also announced the abolition of the controversial Cargo Tracking Note (CTN) and directed the Customs Service to begin a 24-hour shift operation to drastically reduce cargo dwell time at the ports to a maximum of seven days.
The minister gave the directives when she, in company of the minister of transport and some members of the Economic Management Team, visited the nation’s ports, the NCS and some concessionaires at the Apapa ports in Lagos yesterday. She said it was time for the ports to start working.
She also said the comptroller-general of the NCS, Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko, had expressed his readiness to disband the Customs taskforce.
She said: “We the Economic Management Team, the director-general of Customs and members of the Presidential Taskforce on Customs have decided that it is time for our ports to start working. It is time for it to start working for honest Nigerians who want to create jobs. We want to check corruption, reduce cost of doing business at our ports and also reduce time for clearing goods.
“We have therefore decided that, within the next two months, we shall reduce the number of agencies at the ports. Now we have 14 and we are reducing the number to six and the six include the NPA, NIMASA, the police, the Immigration Service, the Customs Service, the SSS and the ports…
“The NCS taskforce has been disbanded. The CG has accepted to disband the taskforce. The era of working for only six or eight hours is gone. Customs officers are now to work in 24-hour shifts, seven days a week. We have given them three months to organise themselves.”
She however stated that services of other agencies would still be needed, but stressed that those agencies would stay away from the ports and would be called in whenever their services are needed.
“The use of CTN which is causing our importers and businessmen a huge loss of income is hereby abolished. We shall work on streamlining forms that are used,” she added.
“This is no longer time for talks. This is action and the implementations start now,” she said.
Expressing his commitment to the reforms, Customs chief Dikko warned all Customs officers to leave the roads.
“From today, no Customs officer should be on the road. There is a controller in every command and whatever that is being conveyed has been properly checked by the relevant command controller,” he said.
Meanwhile the CBN yesterday blamed the naira depreciation on the fuel subsidy payments, urging government to speed up the processes of removing the subsidy and implementing the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
The decision of increasing the lending rate is to hike the rate of borrowing which would discourage speculative borrowing and in turn make the naira stronger.
This is the sixth time in 10 months the apex bank would be raising the benchmark rate this year.
The decisions were the highpoint of a one-day extraordinary meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee held at the CBN’s headquarters in Abuja, in response to unusual developments in the global and domestic economy, with potential negative impact on domestic liquidity conditions and renewed threats to price and exchange rate stability.
The CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who addressed journalists shortly after the meeting, said the move would help to tighten liquidity and check the rate of inflation in the country.
Explaining the voting pattern, he said, eight voted in favour of raising the MPR to 12 per cent while one member voted in favour of the status quo.
On the symmetric corridor, he said that the committee voted unanimously for it to be retained at +/-200 basis points.
The CBN governor also defended? the deregulation policy, stressing that it was estimated that by simply passing the PIB and removing subsidies on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) it would add at least US$10 billion to the national reserves annually.
He stated that the petroleum subsidy for 2011 alone is estimated to be about US$6 billion, adding that a substantial part of oil production (about 40 per cent) is currently in deep offshore wells.