Despite reports of cargoes being diverted to neighbouring ports of Cotonou in Benin Republic and Lome in Togo by Nigerian importers, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) says it has recorded an impressive performance in terms of cargo throughput in the first half of 2018.
According to its first quarter 2018 performance report released by the Nigerian Ports Authority through the Nigerian Port Consultative Council (PCC) at its quarterly meeting held in Lagos last week, the NPA recorded 18,729,889 metric tons of goods in the first quarter of 2018 as against the 17,250,334 metric tons of cargo the seaports received by the 4th quarter of 2017, indicating an increase of 8.6 per cent.
The NPCC meeting was graced by the Managing Director of the NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman and also attended by its members who were drawn from various departments of the agency as well as the Marine Police, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and terminal operators.
According to the report, even though there was increased cargo traffic, vehicle traffic within the period under review dropped as a total of 37, 584 vehicles were handled by NPA, showing a decrease of 13.2% from 43,338 units received in the previous quarter.
The report added that, inward traffic stood at 10,617,318 metric tons, representing 56.7 per cent of cargo throughput in the 1st quarter of 2018 while the outward cargo traffic was said to be 8,112,671 metric tons, representing 46.3 per cent of the total cargo traffic.
Regrettably, container traffic in the 1st quarter of 2018 dropped, as statistics shows that it stood at 387,016 Total Equivalent Unit (TEUs), indicating a decrease of 7.1% from the 416,806 TEUs handled in the 4th quarter of 2017.
This decrease was as a result of the low vehicular access to the ports in Lagos, caused by the vehicular traffic congestion along Apapa Oshodi Expressway.
However, ship traffic was also affected with a downward slide as the volume of ships that called the Nigerian ports within the same period was 985 ships, showing a decrease of 2.3% from 1,008 that called in 4th quarter of 2017.
This shows a gross tonnage of ship 31,693,650 as against 32,598,477 recorded in the 4th quarter of 2017, showing a decline of 2.8%.
According to the report, the turn-around time of vessels stood at 3.8 days when compared with 4.1 day in 4th quarter of 2017. This increase according to the report, is as a result of concerted effort of the management of NPA to improvement on port infrastructure and aid implementation of Federal Government's Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business.
It added that, one of such effort from NPA is the recent procurement of four tug boats to aid towage services.
The statistics also shows that berth occupancy rate was 32.8% as against 33.8% on 4th quarter 2017.
The report concluded that in totality, “therefore, 1st quarter 2018 witnessed a significant growth in cargo traffic when compared with 4th quarter of 2017, there was a decrease of 2.3% in the number of ships that call to our ports but the corresponding cargo traffic increase of 2.3% due to increase in export cargoes especially LNG shipment and agricultural products”.
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