Stakeholders from the maritime industry and government agencies met in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, to identify best way to improve the efficiency and ease of doing business in the eastern ports.
Menon explained that MACN is a private sector initiative by shipping companies all over the world in response to rising cost of doing business as well as low rating in ease of doing business around the world. On his part, Director Programmes, CBI, Mr. Emmanuel Bosah, said that the essence of the workshop was to work with government and the private sector to improve efficiency and ease of doing business in eastern ports.
“But in so doing, how best beyond that we do work with government to ensure that the gaps are understood, the challenges are addressed and everybody is equally responsible together to improve the ease of doing business in the ports in the east.” He underscored the importance of collaboration of all stakeholders by saying that “security agencies should please, cooperate with the task team to ensure that when containers or goods are being removed from the ports or going out there are no further costs that are imposed on those containers or cargos.”in Port Harcourt
In his paper presentation, an Associate Director of MACN, Vivek Menon, said that the process in transforming the maritime operations around seaports has been an important journey since 2012. He affirmed that the CBI’s revelation that Nigeria was one of the highest in cost of doing business because of non-compliance with SOPs 10 years ago. “Now, Nigeria has shown huge progress. Other countries are now eager to work with Nigeria and are copying the model,” he said.