President Muhammadu Buhari has warned Customs and Ports officials not to frustrate the smooth operations of the newly commissioned Inland Dry Port in Kaduna.
He emphasised the need for the officials to make the facilities at the Port work “and not to frustrate business, commercial and industrial enterprises with unnecessary bureaucracy and inflicting on them delays and hardships, thereby defeating the object of the whole exercise as has happened in the past. Make these facilities work this time.”
The President spoke today, Thursday, in Kaduna when he commissioned the Dry Port which he said, hinterland business community had waited for for too long.
He said that such facility has tremendous potentials to ease the way of doing international business for the interior based importers and exporters.
According to Buhari, the Development of Inland Dry Ports is an important factor in the nation’s economic development efforts.
“As Ports of origin for exports and ports of destination for imports, the Inland Dry Ports will accelerate the implementation of our economic diversification policy.
“The concept of Inland Dry Port has gained widespread importance with the tremendous changes in international transportation as a result of the container revolution and the introduction of door-to-door delivery of cargo. It provides importers and exporters located within the nation’s hinterland, especially industrial and commercial outfits, access to shipping and port services without necessarily visiting the seaports.
“It also enables them to process clearance of their import cargo and take delivery of their raw materials and machinery close to their places of business. “Furthermore, the Inland Dry Ports will also provide our exporters the much needed facilities to process, package, consolidate and forward their exports to their customers all over the world without having to physically be at the seaports.
“This replicates the port economy in the various centres where the Dry Ports are located inland thereby generating employment and contributing to the ease of doing business.
Buhari said that in addition to the Kaduna Inland Dry Port, six other Inland Dry Ports in Ibadan, Aba, Kano, Jos, Funtua and Maiduguri, which have also been gazetted, are at various stages of completion.”
The President congratulated the Kaduna State Government, the Federal Ministry of Transportation, Nigerian Shippers’ Council and the hinterland importers and exporters on what he called “this epoch making occasion.”
He also commended the initiative of Nigerian Shippers’ Council towards promoting the provision of the modern transport infrastructural facilities even as he advised the Concessionaires of the other six Dry Ports to emulate the Concessionaires of the Kaduna Dry Port by accelerating work on theirs “so that, in the next few months, they too can be commissioned.
“With the full complement of the seven Dry Ports, congestion at the seaport and traffic gridlock in the port complex will be eliminated. Consequently, the cost of transportation and therefore cost of doing business will be reduced.”
He called on all relevant stakeholders across the public and private sectors, particularly Nigeria Customs Service, Nigerian Ports Authority, Nigerian Railway Corporation, Shipping Companies and Agencies, Seaport Terminal Operators, Clearing and Forwarding Agents, Road Haulers and importers and exporters to utilize the facility optimally. [myad]
