For many years, maritime industry stakeholders have called for Single Window as a platform for government agencies to interface on matters regarding importation. This never happened.
Even though their prayers for a Single Window remained unanswered, at a point, some players started calling for a Port Community System (PCS). There is little or no difference between the two. It is just a matter details.
Recently, this newspaper found out that a significant revenue of up to about N50Billion is lost annually as a result of lack of the Port Community System in the nation’s maritime sector. Some other sources have put the losses at a much higher figure.
We also discovered that the Port Community System, which ought to be a unified platform for all stakeholders, has (sadly) remained elusive due to inter-agency rivalry and protectioninsm.
In the absence of this unifying platform, importers and clearing agents are forced to contend with challenges in the cargo delivery chain, a development which causes staggering demurrage costs.
We recall that, after many years of paying lip service, Federal Government agencies under the auspices of the Federal Ministry of Transportation came out in 2022 to give their support to the establishment a National Single Window regime in the nation’s transportation sector.
Since then and as it has always been, there has been no action by these agencies to collectively activate this desire. Rather, they have been pursuing individual agenda towards their own system of profiling cargoes arriving Nigerian seaports.
Surpassingly, some of these agencies have created separate platform and given it different names, but serving the same purpose of profiling and keeping tab on imports. This is even as the industry yearns for a better way of doing things.
A Port Community System is a National Single Window that links individual seaports and all supply chain actors. This unique platform automates data and knowledge real-time sharing and allows better interaction management within the network.
Similarly, the International Port Community Systems Association (EPCSA) has described a Port Community System (PCS) as an open electronic platform that connects individual existing systems and databases of distinct companies and organizations. The global body explains that, the main purpose of the PCS is to enable secure and intelligent operational data exchange and consolidation within the port network.
Clearly, the port community involves public and private sector players. In this divide are users of port services, namely: shipping lines, shipping agents, freight forwarders and other logistics specialists, other transport services providers and their respective teams, inland terminal operators, warehouses managers, shippers, and cargo owners, all of who operate in the long chain. These players send information on cargo destined for the ports; in this case Nigeria ports.
On the other side of the divide are personnel of government agencies who receive information pertaining to cargoes from the stakeholders identified above. They are employees of the Nigerian Port Authority, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, NAFDAC, SON, and others.
The collectivity of the players identified above are those who the PSC or the Single Window is expected to connect and in the process engender a tidier and more responsible port system, where players are traceable and are made to account for their actions or any infractions.
It is sad that, at the moment the cargo importation and clearance procedure in Nigeria is lacking coordination.
We are appalled by the open display of rivalry between NCS, NIMASA, NPA and NSC, as each agency operates its own devices in its own non-exclusive zone. This division and protectionism have denied the nation’s economy of the desired benefit.
The port community system connects a variety of electronic tools used by the network members. In specifics, it connects vessels automatic identification system (AIS) to the Customs e-cargo declaration, leading to remote payment of duties
It also entails that shipping lines’ e-booking of containers or space for general and bulk cargo, monitoring of physical movements of containers or goods, e-manifest data submission, release of carrier Delivery Order and tracking of cargo status for importers or check ocean vessel schedules for exporters
Fir the agencies operating the port system, the arrangement entails e-settlement of all bills: handling costs, logistics fees, demurrage charges, and seamless release of Terminal Delivery Order.
As the nation’s maritime sector’s decision makers continue to foot-drag, the Nigerian economy continues to lose the huge benefits inherent in adoption of the Port Community System.
Each time we think of the huge benefits accruable to a port system that is governed by orderliness, transparency and accountability, we think of the much-touted ease of doing business.
There is no doubt that the Nigerian port system is riddled with corruption and all manners of illegalities, and the only way all these infractions can be eliminated is by adopting a Port Community System, which will out an end to the empires of corruption that the various stakeholders have built around themselves.
