A Port Harcourt-based Freight Forwarder, Mr. Usman Yahaya, has called on the Federal Government to, without delay, tackle all forms of bottlenecks that have inhibited trade in the country.
Yahaya who was speaking while interacting with The Tide in Port Harcourt, remarked that a lot of man hour and resources had been lost due to delay in trade, especially in the process of Cargo clearance at the nation’s ports.
He noted also that the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) being implemented by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) had facilitated trade by eliminating some bottlenecks that caused delay and also eliminated costs arising from demurrage.
Yahaya, who is a member of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) commended the customs for the steps so far taken to facilitate trade, adding that the only problem importers experienced recently was network failure arising from rainstorm that affected the server.
According to him, experiencing network problem does not mean that the system has failed because we make use of networks that are dependent on weather.
He said “there was storm for instance, that damaged the server here yesterday, and as such, we could not work, that does not mean that PAAR is not working”.
The Freight Forwarder also noted that some people were living fat on demurrage because, as he put it, none of my clients has paid for demurrage since the inception of PAAR.

Corlins Walter