A freight forwarder; Rev Emmanuel Agubanze, has charged the Federal Government to ensure that one of its policies in 2018 is to make vehicle importation through the ports cost effective.
Speaking during a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos, Rev. Agubanze said that if Nigerian ports are cost effective, people will not have any reason to import through the unapproved routes even as he called for the urgent need to protect freight forwarders.
“It is high time that we revisited the importation of vehicles through the land borders because when you ban the importation of vehicles through land borders, there is need for you to make importation of vehicles through the approved route cost effective. As for me, I don’t support any policy of government that deals with the interest of people; the policy is not for somebody like me. If the Nigerian ports are working at the optimal level, there will not be people importing vehicles through the land borders. But because we are not working effectively there is need for us to protect our freight forwarders. There is need for the government to ensure that our ports are functioning optimally so that all these illegal importation will stop. That is a clear way of saying that we are not doing well because if we are doing well people will not be forced to import vehicles through the unapproved routes”
Rev. Agubenze lamented that there were enormous challenges facing the sector in 2017 particularly with the high rate of duties especially on used vehicles.
“The challenges on vehicle importation last year are enormous. The duties payable for fairly-used vehicles are very high and you see so many damaged vehicles coming into the country. And you see that the manipulation of duties have been very dominant; people bringing in vehicles through the unapproved routes and when you continue to do that the federal government loses a lot of money”, he noted.
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