Vessel traffic to Nigerian Ports slumps amidst multiple challenges

Funso Olojo

Nigerian Ports recorded a mixed fortunes of performance in the first quarter of 2018 when the number of vessels which called at the ports during the period shrunk, slumping from 1008 vessels in the 4th quarter of 2017 to 985 vessels during the period under review, showing a decrease of 2.3 percent

This shows a gross tonnage of ship 31,693,650 as against 32,598,477 recorded in the 4th quarter of 2017, showing a decline of 2.8%.

Similarly, container traffic in the 1st quarter of 2018 dropped as statistics show that within the period under review, container traffic stood at 387,016 Total Equivalent Unit (TEUs),indicating a decrease of 7.1% from 416,806 TEUs handled by the same ports in the 4th quarter of 2017.

Also, vehicle traffic within the period under review dropped as a total of 37, 584 vehicles were handled by NPA within the period under review, showing a decrease of 13.2% from 43,338 units received in the previous quarter.

Conversely however, the ports curiously recorded an impressive cargo throughput with the period under review with 18,729,889 metric tones of goods in the first quarter of 2018 as against the 17,250,334 metric tons of cargo the seaports received in the 4th quarter of 2017, indicating an increase of 8.6 per cent.

The inward traffic stood at 10,617,318 metric tons, representing 56.7 per cent of cargo throughput at the ports in the 1st quarter of 2018 while the outward cargo traffic was said to be 8,112,671 metric tons representing 46.3 per cent of the total cargo traffic.

This performance report was released by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) during the Nigerian Port Consultative Council (PCC) quarterly meeting held in Lagos Thursday.

The meeting was attended by the PCC and its members which were drawn from various departments of the authority including the Marine Police, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and terminal operators,

Investigations revealed that the slur in the port performance of NPA may not be unconnected to the poor port access road, security challenges and some government policies which are not considered friendly to boost vessels traffic

However, the turn-around time of vessels stood at 3.8 days when compared with 4.1 day in 4th quarter of 2017 while berth occupancy rate was 32.8% as against 33.8% on 4th quarter 2017.

The 1st quarter 2018 witnessed a significant growth in cargo traffic when compared with 4th quarter of 2017, there was a decrease of 2.3% in the number of ships that call to the ports but the corresponding cargo traffic increased by 2.3% due to increase in export cargoes especially LNG shipment and agricultural products.

On the other hand however, there was an improvement in the turn-around time of vessels. This increase, according to the report, was as a result of concerted effort of the management of NPA to improvement on port infrastructure and aid implementation of Federal Government’s Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business.