VICE President Yemi Oshibanjo has decried the imposition of
arbitrary high charges by shipping lines in West and Central
African countries.
He also urged the Union of African Shippers Council to adopt
common political and diplomatic strategies to check the operations
of shipping lines servicing the ports in the sub-region.
Prof Osinbanjo who spoke yesterday in Abuja while declaring open
the sub-regional summit on unfair shipping surcharges and high
local shipping charges at the ports of West African sub-region,
said some of the charges were unnecessary.
He listed the charges to include bunker adjustment factor,
currency adjustment factor, war risk surcharge, confession sub
charges, peak season surcharges, extra risk insurance sub charge,
freight rate surcharge, and port operation recovery surcharge.
He said the surcharges amounted to huge sums of illegal capital
flight from the countries of the sub-region and has been depleting
the countries foreign reserves. He also said data obtained from the
Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) showed that about N2billion is
repatriated by multi-national shipping firms from reasonable of
demurrage charges for Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in each quarter
of the year.
Attributing the poor transport infrastructure development to one
of the reasons for the high port charges, he urged AU member-states
to prioritise the development of transport infrastructure for the
work-ability of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement
(ACFTA).
The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, also condemned
the unilateral manner in which service providers introduce and
increase freight rates in the sub-region through various
surcharges.
He said the Gederal Government, through its partnership with the
Global Shippers Forum (GSF), has started checking claims of
terrorism, piracy, armed attacks on ships and other negative
activities in the Gulf of Guinea to increase charges and introduce
more surcharges in Nigeria
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