Business – Page 3 – Shipping World News Magazine

Dec142017 by Our EditorNo Comments

President Buhari Authorized NNPC to Hide N50b from TSA Account “

The House of Representatives on Tuesday raised questions over a “purported” presidential approval withholding some special Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation accounts from being transferred to the Treasury Single Account. The accounts, with funds worth N50bn, are still being kept by commercial banks in breach of the TSA policy, which provides that all accounts belonging to Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government should be transferred to the TSA. The TSA, a centralised Federal Government revenue account, is kept by the Central Bank of Nigeria. A Nigerian firm, SystemSpecs, provides the Remita electronic platform for running the TSA, saving the Federal Government revenue that could, ordinarily, have been lost. An ad hoc committee of the...

Dec112017 by Our EditorNo Comments

Full Text of Engr. Ogbeifun’s Address At Shipowners Dinner Night

Business, Maritime

OPENING ADDRESS BY MR. GREG OGBEIFUN PRESIDENT, SHIPOWNERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (SOAN) ON THE OCCASION OF THE ALL SHIPOWNERS WORKSHOP AND DINNER PROTOCOL- RECOGNITIONS The events at the recent International Maritime Organization (IMO) elections into Category C of the Council where Nigeria lost and actually came second to the last position underscores the importance and urgency of the theme of this end of year Workshop and Dinner “Giving a Critical Lifeline to the Nigerian Maritime Industry”. Our performance at that election has dealt a hard blow on our psyche as a maritime nation. The world has told us that our maritime domain is sick and almost moribund, that we are not a maritime nation that can be relied on for maritime trade, maritime security, maritime infrastructure or ...

Dec102017 by Our EditorNo Comments

$100 billion Ship building Fund: Ship Owners may drag Amaechi before Buhari

Breaking News, Business, Maritime, Opinion

The Nigerian Ship Owners Association (NSOA) is set to drag the Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, before President Muhammad Buhari over the refusal of the Nigerian Maritime Administration & Safety Agency (NIMASA) to commence the disbursement of the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF). The end of year dinner of the NSOA last week in Lagos almost degenerated into a brawl when Engr. Greg Ogbeifun challenged the minister to show them where he derived his powers to hold back the CVFF. The funds are about $100 billion. At the dinner, Amaechi had boasted that as long as he remained the minister of transportation, not one Kobo of the CVFF would be disbursed. The CVFF currently domiciled in NIMASA has become an issue of controversy as successive managements in the agency have fail...

Dec92017 by Our EditorNo Comments

Amaechi, Ship Owners Fight Dirty over N100b Vessel Financing Fund

Breaking News, Business, Maritime

The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi on Thursday announced that he will not disburse the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF), dashing the hopes and expectation of indigenous ship owners, who have been waiting for the disbursement of the fund for more than a decade. This is even as the ship owners demanded the sack of Dakuku Peterside as Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) for his incompetence in running the affairs of the agency. Amaechi told a gathering of ship owners and key stakeholders who converged at a workshop and dinner organized by the Ship Owners Association of Nigeria (SOAN) that as long as he remains the minister, the fund will not be disbursed. The CVFF which currently stands at over $100billion was created solely t...

Dec72017 by Our EditorNo Comments

It’s time to focus on governance and stop blaming Jonathan — Amaechi

Breaking News, Business

The Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, has admonished his colleagues in the Muhammadu Buhari administration to stop blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan. Mr. Amaechi said it is time for administration officials to concentrate on delivering good policies to the citizens rather than dragging the former president for Nigeria’s woes. “I agree with those who said we should stop criticising the last government and that we should do our own,” The Nation newspaper quoted Mr. Amaechi as saying during a meeting at his office Tuesday. The minister decried Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit, drawing a comparison with other relatively new countries like Singapore. “We need to leverage on what we know. People are shouting intermodal transport; I went to the new airport in Singapore a...

Dec22017 by Asu BeksNo Comments

IMO COUNCIL ELECTION: Again , NIMASA returns without the ‘ trophy’

Breaking News, Business, Maritime

For the third consecutive time, Nigeria yesterday lost its bid to get re-elected into category 'C' of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) which took place in London, scoring a miserable 98 points in an election that saw five African countries of Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya and Liberia joining the group. The category C is the executive organ of the IMO that takes decisions in the absence of the Assembly and coordinates all activities of the Organs of the organisation. It has 20 member countries with special interest in maritime transport or navigation. Nigeria's 36-man delegation was led by the Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), directors and top ministry officials...

Nov292017 by Our EditorNo Comments

Save our ports system from collapse, NAGAFF tells FG

Breaking News, Business, Port News

The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders, NAGAFF, has called on the federal government to urgently address the issue of high port charges imposed on cargoes by shipping companies in order to save the port system from imminent collapse. It further stated that there were official hindrances deliberately put on the path of ports in the Eastern axis, thus making them unenviable and unattractive. These assertions were made in a memo sent to the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala Usman. In the said letter, NAGAFF stated that the port access roads leading into the Apapa premier port had become a national eyesore. "It is now a national shame that the primary gateway access road to the nation's economy is in crisis and a disaster to ...

Nov282017 by Our EditorNo Comments

16 Companies In INTELS-Operated Free Trade Zone Deregistered

Business, Law, Maritime

The Oil and Gas Free Trade Zones Authority (OGFZA) has deregistered a total of 16 companies operating in the zones under the concession of INTELS Nigeria Limited, the company whose contract for ship pilotage was recently revoked by the federal government. However, the companies are said to have voluntarily applied to withdraw from the trade zones following the lull in business activities even before the face-off between the federal government and Intels. According to the OGFZA, the application for de-registration between March and April 2017, saying that the current feud has no connection with the exit of the affiliate OGFZA maintained that companies under the zone indicated interest to leave due to lull of economic activities in Nigeria and the authority is currently engaging INT...

Nov222017 by Our EditorNo Comments

Seme Customs Command Rakes in N5.3b in 10 Months

Business

By Sylvanus Ekpo The Nigeria Customs Service, Seme Command, generated a total of N5.3 billion between January and October, 2017 in spite of the downturn in the economy through the Lagos Abidjan Corridor. Also, 23 persons are undergoing trial for various offenses. Making the claims recently, the Comptroller of the command, Mohammed Aliyu, said the command used the collaborative anti-smuggling approach with other security agencies to dislodge and ground the activities of economic saboteurs. In turn, the command witnessed the decline in smuggling in the Seme border axis while there was a corresponding increase in revenue generation. He stated that the anti-smuggling unit made a total of 469 seizures with a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N508, 469, 776.00 for the period under review. In...

Nov222017 by Our EditorNo Comments

NPA: Port reform without road reform

Business, Port News

by Sylvanus Ekpo These are not the best of times for the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA. It is no longer news that the port access roads at Apapa and Tin Can Island ports are in a terrible state of disrepair. According to the Port Act of 1954 as amended, section 32 mandates the NPA to regulate traffic that is moving in and the one which is approaching but over the years, due to executive recklessness, the access roads were allowed to decay and today they have become an embarrassment to everybody, a congenital eyesore in the face of our port concession. Before the ports were concessioned in 2006 to private terminal operators by government, the NPA had a yearly throughput of 35million tons of cargo, a figure that could hardly be managed then. But, after the concession in March 2006, the...