Shippers Council projects $10bn growth in 5 years

The Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) is projecting a $10 billion growth in the shipping sub-sector of the nation’s economy.

The Executive Secretary of NSC, Barr. Pius Akuta, made this disclosure at a media parley held in Lagos yesterday.

Akuta, while giving account of his stewardship in the last one year, also stated that the council was able to save the nation a whopping N4 billion from party charter and fees.

The Shippers’ Council boss stated that the council now has a programme that would project its activities in the next five years.

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He said the projection would focus majorly on what it will be doing as port economic regulator in terms of facilitating trade and ensuring that business investments in this sector grow to a maximum of over $10 billion in the next five years, adding that they have already started talking to some stakeholders who are on the same page with them.

“The other day, we were again honoured to commission the upgrade of the APM Terminal, and that was an investment of about $105 million. When we engaged the management of APMT, they were already on course to invest another $2 million in the course of the next one year, and we believe that that will continue to go on and on, and other stakeholder players will also go in that direction. So we are happy that when that programme comes, it will also conform or coincide with the passage of our law when it comes into force.

“So we will be engaging in a lot of training and retraining of our staff, and then programmes that will promote our stakeholders, especially the shippers, under our fund, which already we have some of the shipping companies that have negotiated settlements out of court and have started coming to settle those agreements and to pay in money into that fund,” he added.