Guardian Govt’s delay of Calabar port dredging threatens $10b investment SUNDAY, 18 AUGUST 2013 21:17 FROM ANIETIE AKPAN, CALABAR NEWS - NATIONAL IDRIS-UMAR OVER $10 billion investment of different firms is being threatened in Calabar, Cross River State as the Federal Government foot drags on the dredging of the 81-kilometre channel of Calabar Port. Some of the companies being threatened include General Electric, Tinapa Business Resort, Calabar Free Trade Zone, ECM Terminals Ltd, Intel Services, Cocoa Industries and many others. Some investors in Calabar Port and its environ (Shorelines Logistic of Adaxx Petroleum, Intel Services and ECM Terminals) decried the shallow nature of Calabar Port as the Minister of Planning, Alhaji Shamsudeen Usman and the Policy Monitoring Sub-Committee (PMC) of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) visited the Port and other facilities at the weekend on a fact-finding mission and to assess the challenges the concessionaires are facing. They told the minister that the approach of the Calabar channel is 6.4 metres at high tide and 5.4 metres at low tide whereas the concession agreement stipulated that the Federal Government will take the draft to 9.5 metres and the Bureau on Public Enterprise (BPE) had confirmed that this would be achieved on start of business. The General Manager of ECM Marine, Mr. Kingsley Iheanacho, which holds the concession for Calabar Port for 25 years, said ECM has put in over $13 million in the port yet cannot meet its target as just “a total of 680 vessels were handled between August 2007 and December 2012” which is far below expectations. He said, “ECM took over Terminal B on August 1, 2007 and article ix, Section 9.6 of the concession agreement stipulates that the dredging of the channel has to be done by NPA (Nigeria Ports Authority) to the advertised draft of 9.4 metres (but) over six years after ECMT took over operations, this has not been achieved as the dredging of the channel was abandoned same year just months after we commenced operations. “The non-completion of the dredging of the channel to the advertised draft of 9.4 metres is today the biggest threat to the development of the port with adverse effect on our financial projection and cargo throughput was predicted on the completion of the dredging as assured during the concession exercise.” Iheanacho said, “in view of the upcoming projects for Unicem Cement Company expansion project phase 2 and General Electric projects, there is no guarantee that the project items will be shipped via Calabar Port due to the constraint of draft limitation when this should actually be the case assuming the desired draft of 9.8 metres was available. “Our major clients like Flour mills, Unicem and Dangote and others do not presently enjoy the economy of scale in their vessel nominations to Calabar due to the fact that their full load arriving vessel has to lighten some cargo tonnage in Lagos before calling at Calabar Port due to draft limitations. Hence, a cargo ship load that could have come at once per voyage ends up being conveyed down to Calabar Port in two or three voyages”. He pointed out that all these limitations which also include bad road network into Calabar from the North, South and Eastern part of the country have terribly affected business at the Calabar Free Trade Zone (CFTZ) and the Tinapa Free Trade Zone (TFTZ) as companies there are just struggling to remain afloat in business. However, the companies in the Port said they are mainly depending on liquid cargo to survive. Reacting, the minister debunked media reports that the privatisation programme was not working.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 08:46:33 +0000
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