A former Public Relations Officer of the Ports & Terminal Multipurpose Limited (PTML) chapter of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) Deola Sulieman, has knocked Five Star Logistics Terminal in the areas of vehicles handling, even as he rated (PTML) higher.
Suleiman explained that it will only take you 30 minutes from the time you ‘punch’ your cargo to take delivery of the cargo at PTML while you will spend close to a week to do the same thing at Five Star Logistics terminal.
He said this last week in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos.
“Somebody is spending a week to take delivery of one vehicle and somebody is spending 30minutes to take delivery of the same vehicle. In Grimaldi, if you ‘punch’ today you will take delivery of your cargo the same day, you pay in the morning before 6pm your vehicle is out and in Five Star you are spending one week”
He lampooned the federal government on the age limit policy on imported vehicle, saying that the policy is bad and that it has subjected Nigerians to more hardship.
Suleiman advised the incumbent administration to borrow a leave from what the former President Ibrahim Babangida did when he was in power, where commercial vehicles were duty free.
“The age limit policy on imported vehicle is a nonsense policy and it is very easy to analyze. During Babangida regime, when labour went on strike that N3000 minimum wage was nothing that the transportation alone was too expensive, Babangida just issued out a circular that all commercial buses will have free duty. So you see by the time there is no duty on commercial buses, you will definitely reduce your price”
“But a year to 2015 election the then CGC, Diko promised the former President Jonathan that he will generate enough revenue for him. He now wrote a Memo to ministry of finance and increased the customs duty on used vehicles that was why the duty grew from 10% to 35%. And they now said that anything new you pay additional 35% making total of 70%”
He charged the government to adopt ‘the newer the vehicle the lower the duty’ policy stressing that it will help address the issue of importing old and rickety vehicles in the country.
“Why can’t we help ourselves in Nigeria to reduce unemployment, in Ghana the newer the vehicle, the lower the duty. I don’t support the idea of the government opening land borders because all these shipping companies and terminal operators in Nigeria pay high tax to the federal government. By the time their cargoes are diverted to neighboring countries, you will see that they will lay off their staff, it has happened before and I can’t support that”.
