Tariff war: Discordant tunes over FG, stakeholders’ agreement

LATEST UPDATE: Tariff war: Discordant tunes over FG, stakeholders’ agreement

By UCHE USIM

Warring factions on the issue of ar­bitrary shipping charges are now singing discordant tunes over res­olutions reached at the stakeholders’ meet­ing held in Abuja Tuesday.

The meeting, Daily Sun learnt, was at the instance of the Transport Minister, Senator Idris Umar, who, without prejudice to exist­ing court cases, wanted to resolve the lingering crisis over the alleged high tariffs slammed on freight forwarders by terminal operators and shipping agents.

Aside the Minister, others present at the meeting were the National Presidents of vari­ous freight forwarding bodies, the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), the Nigeria Ship­pers Council (NSC), Special Assistance to the Minister on Maritime Affairs, representatives of Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria, AP

among other stakeholders. Moller Terminal (APMT),

The freight forwarders in a statement by Joe Sanni of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Agents (ANLCA) claim it was decided at the meeting that the role of the NSC as the commercial regu­lator of the port system must be recognised and that the status quo be maintained as effected, by invoking powers inherent in the Act of Parlia­ment establishing the council, upon which it returned charg­es to the pre-2009 levels.

“This was done because of the unwholesome practises in the ports system, arbitrariness and the fact that the pricing mechanism of services in the ports needs to be established/benchmarked.

Progressive storage charg­es have no known legal basis, neither is it practised any­where in the world. There­fore, it must be dropped forth­with. That’s the crux of illegal charges. It was also decided that a standing committee of critical stakeholders be estab­lished to meet every month to brainstorm on emerging oper­ational challenges in the ports. Decisions arrived at at such meetings will be passed on to the Nigeria Shippers Council to engage relevant stakehold­ers before implementation,” Sanni stated.

Reacting to that, the spokesman of the terminal operators, Bolaji Akinola, maintained that various per­sons expressed different opinions at the meeting and as such it would be wrong to imply that an agreement was reached on reversal of storage charges or on the powers of the NSC.

“These matters are sub-ju­dice. It is therefore completely wrong to make comments or pass judgment on a matter that is pending before a court of competent jurisdiction. APM Terminals’ representatives made it clear that they were at the meeting without prejudice to an ongoing court case on progressive storage charges and did not say anything at the meeting,” he stated.

Akinola added that all those who spoke at the meeting ex­pressed their views, saying it was wrong to construe the views as agreements and at­tempt to use it to interfere with an ongoing court case.

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