Exporters decry APMT brazen frustration of export process

Tayo Oladipupo

Members of the exporters group in Nigeria have expressed how AP Moller Terminal (APMT) is frustrating government efforts at advancing export trade in the country.

The terminal operator was said to have introduced new charges immediately the government announced its resolve to encourage exportation of Nigerian made goods to other parts of the world.

Bunmi Olumekun, the president of Export Container Goods in Apapa told our correspondent at a stakeholders’ meeting in Apapa recently how APMT introduced new charges for it selfish gains.

Olumekun who doubles as the CEO of Rely Maritime Ltd added that when exporters decided to bring their cargoes to the terminal with barges, the terminal began to collect 75 dollar and 140 dollars for twenty and forty feet containers respectively.

According to him, the most painful of the experience is that the operators do not have enough equipment and manpower to discharge such containers from the barges hence spending upwards of three days before they will be eventually discharged.

“Coming back to APMT, when government pronounced that they want to promote export, and thankfully, now we have about ten percent export going out of the country and they now capitalise on that and started introducing terminal charges which we were not paying before just for them to make their money.

“They are collecting over sixty thousand naira for forty feet while twenty feet is about forty thousand naira. They didn’t stop on that, you now find out for them collecting all these things we decided to use barges to bring our containers from Ikorodu, Brawl to Apapa port and they came up again and told us that before we could do that we have to pay in dollars.

“We started paying 75 dollars per 20 feet and 140 dollars for 40 feet containers. Despite all this, when we take our barge of about 30 containers to APMT, they will be there for days, they will not offload them because of lack of equipment, lack of manpower.

They frustrate the business because they want to make money for themselves.

“They capitalise on any innovation we bring in to make money for them and we have reported to the Federal Government but nobody is doing anything about it.

He maintained that the ugly trend has been happening for a long time without a check from the government agencies despite several reports made to them.

“We have been into this for many years and we have tried to seek alternatives or means to get export containers out of Nigeria, get them inside the port for them to be moved outside the country.