Mr. Tunde Keshinro is the Terminal Manager of Nigeria’s Roll On Roll Off vehicle terminal; Port and Terminal Multiservices Limited (PTML). In this interview with Shipping Position Daily Correspondent; Dapo Olawuni, Mr Keshinro highlighted major constraints to ease of doing business at Nigerian ports. He also acknowledged an increase in the number of vehicles being handled at the terminals due to closure of land borders. He equally said the terminal have diversified into handling general cargoes.
“We are in the age of climate change and we must as a country, be concerned about the quality of vehicles we are bringing into our environment”
How have you weathered the storm of Auto Policy and the period of economic recession?
Very correctly, the automotive policy of 2013, effective 2014 on full implementation between 2015 and 2016 drastically reduced the quantity of vehicles getting discharged into PTML, because there was a drop in the volume of cargoes booked for Lagos on carriers calling at PTML. Weathering the storm warranted that the company scale down its operations, particularly in 2015, we had to go through a process of retrenchment, the terminal being a multi-purpose terminal also diversified by embracing general cargo and some other business opportunities within the industry in order to stay afloat.
At the beginning of 2017, the government came up with a policy restricting entry through the land borders and this has fundamentally changed the game, as at the second quarter of 2017, things started picking up and by 2018, we acknowledged that vehicle importation into Lagos port picked up by 50%. However as good as the increase was, we didn't rise up to the level of the business before the automotive policy, when you compare the vehicle importation against a period of 2016-2017, it is fair to agree that things picked up because vehicles that are hitherto routed through the borders by importers to beat the high cost of tariff, they were compelled to channel their cargo to Lagos port.
Again, this equally brought another dimension into the business and this has to do with the nature of vehicles being imported, what we observed is that we now have more of damaged, ‘accidented’ and relatively low grade vehicles compared to what we used to have in 2012 and 2013 prior to the implementation of the auto policy. The high duty was still there, and for people to be able to cope with the product- which is used vehicles, they had to play with the low-end purchases from the countries of origin and this had to do with salvaged vehicles, and these are equally older models rather than newer models, relatively, majority of the vehicles being imported are less than 2010 as their year of manufacture, we expect to see newer vehicles of 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018, and when I look at the set of vehicles coming into the country in terms of age, you would see few 2017, 2018 vehicles, they now appear to be for the super-rich and this shouldn't be, we should address our mind to the fact these old vehicles add to the environmental issues, we are in the age of climate change and we must as a country be concerned about the quality of vehicles we are bringing into our environment, noting full well that the projection of the government is to promote a sustainable environment, so we much achieve balance, we should not just be imposing duty and tariffs without being mindful of how it affects our collective well-being.
On ISPS Code implementation at jetties, what is your assessment?
I am sure you would acknowledge the effort of some private operators in Nigeria, government agencies responsible for maritime security need to step up the game, it is very sad when we as a people tend to wait for other people to tell us what is right, we should be able to define the framework under which we want to live and expect other people to respect us within the value proposition that we have. As a nation that has subscribed to different UN protocols and conventions, we were not forced to adopt these conventions, it is out of our own willingness and sovereign intentions, we should not wait for other countries to put sanctions on us before we put our acts together.
If you look around the port, it is disaster waiting to happen because the efforts we have seen as a result of categorisation of port terminals on acceptable standard is out of their own drive of wanting to meet up, and even with that, there are challenges. From my privileged position at PTML, I can tell you we face difficulties in trying to implement the provisions of ISPS Code; part of it is the biometric access card into the terminal, there were lots of contentions and unwarranted antagonism which shouldn't have arisen in the first instance, because it is in our collective interest to ensure that we implement all international conventions.
Have you been able to resolve the opposition by freight forwarders against the access card?
We never had issues with the access card, the way to measure the acceptance of the card is the number of people who subscribed to the access card, there were lots of misconceptions and wrong information about the access card, some were plainly out of mischief, people use to see the port as unfettered area with free entry, we never restricted access, it is a matter of regulated access into the facility, we are not saying that you cannot come into the terminal, provided you have genuine business to transact in the terminal, either at terminal side or Customs side. To those who have genuine businesses to do and they have genuine documents to back up their transactions, they were able to procure the card without any difficulty because under the ISPS code, it is incumbent on us to account for the people accessing the terminal, we can only do this when we are able to provide general standard of access requirement without discriminating, we never discriminated, we are only adhering the rules and regulations of the laws of Nigeria through CRFFN and Customs.
How about threat from the waterfront security?
First, I must say that the terminal is protected because we are one of the few terminals that have a fence between the waterfront and the main terminal, you cannot gain entrance into the terminal because we are fenced round. As for the vessels, there is a general openness and general threat, but the location of the terminal is fairly better, we have a good collaboration with the Marine Command of the Nigerian Police Force, they are always around as well as the officers of Nigeria customs. The good thing is that the designated authorities are the ones boarding the vessels, there is no other person, but for attacks from the waterfront side, we rely on the marine command of the Nigeria Police.
In 2018, what was the quantity of vehicles handled at this terminal, compared to previous years?
I can tell you that as a terminal, we delivered roughly about 159,000 units vehicles of all types in 2018, in 2017, we handled 110,000 units.
Things have picked up, but not up to the level we were in 2012 and 2013, these were periods that importation was high for every terminal.
We are about 35% down from what we used to have.
Agents have complained about delay of transfer of vehicles to your Mile 2 terminal
For transfer to Mile 2, we are putting our best, like I told you, we have seen a lot of degradation in the quality of vehicles coming into the country in terms of being accidented and damaged, this brings delay and human handling, but be that as it may, as a company keep evolving best practices to ensure that we position the vehicles within the free period that the customers are able to take advantage of the terminal.
The focus of the terminal is to enhance the turnover of transaction time for our customers, the key thing to this trade is transaction time which has to do with overall cost, so the quicker you position a cargo at the terminal where customers can have access to them and make declaration for customs inspection, the better for us. We have increased the capacity to do this by extending the working hours, we are not also depending on our own facility alone, we even have to hire third party barge facility to enhance the capacity so as to ensure that within an acceptable time frame, we position the vehicles for the benefit of our customers. So I will tell you that we have extended our working hours, we are even doing night transfer, with all the challenges, all borne by us, for all these, we are not charging a dime from the customers because the concept of the service is a single terminal.
What are the challenges you face; operations wise?
The challenges we face principally is regulatory, the bureaucratic system of our regulatory framework is always a challenge and it has to do with the government. The second challenge is about infrastructure, if you look at the industry today, looking around the environment would tell you more about government's ownership of the port, till tomorrow the government still owns the port; we are just private operators operating in a small area within the larger framework. There is the challenge of infrastructure deficit, safety is also a factor, 24 hours operations comes at an extra cost to the operator both on land and waterfronts. Also, the issue of pricing mechanism is another fundamental factor, there is a lot of things that are not available in the community sense, you are compelled to provide what you naturally should have tapped from, all these add to the price mechanism and yet you are expected to operate within a pricing mechanism.
Unfortunately, we have the issue of unfettered access which is a serious constraint, one thing is for us to take care of our own terminal area, and another thing is the common user area. Looking at the operating environment, I feel sad and unhappy coming to work in this kind of environment, the environment is very poor and you are not seeing any serious changes, it is injurious, when you go around, you would see the way people carelessly handle petroleum products, there has been a lot of fire accidents in and around us for years, but it seems nobody cares.
Within the last 14 years, one expects to see transformation around the ports, showing to the generality of the people the message of concessioning and new way of doing things, if we talk about concessioning, we are to demonstrate it from inside of the ports which unfortunately, a larger number of people are not able to see the developments, the outside part is rubbing us of the gains of the concessioning and it is very unfortunate. Before the concessioning, we were not getting big vessels calling at our ports, but today you will see big vessels coming in, this should be a pride for us as a people.
Discussion about this post