Chairman of Tin-Can Island Container Terminal (TICT) Limited, Mr. Kotik Yehuda, said the company invested about $50 million (N7.5 billion) on infrastructure and cargo handling equipment in five years.

Yehuda, who disclosed this to newsmen on Sunday in Lagos, said that part of the amount was spent on High Information Technology Systems.

He said the amount so far invested by the management of TICT was about five times more than what was supposed to be spent in the lease agreement with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

According to him, the terminal is today the most modern terminal in line with European standards and working with the latest and first class cargo handling equipment.

“The Terminal Operating System (TOS), is connected to satellite and this is why it is possible to locate any container brought into the terminal in few seconds through the computer system,’’ he said.

Yehuda demonstrated the computerised technology in locating a container in the terminal and confirmed that “in few seconds you can easily know where your container is.’’

He said there was also a central monitoring control room with 30 cameras to monitor activities in every corner of the terminal from the Head Office of TICT outside the port.

Yehuda said that future developments in the terminal would largely depend on government policy, as expenditures would keep increasing.

He said the increase in expenditures was caused by salary raise, yearly inflation rate of about 12 per cent, increase in fuel and oil costs and increased costs of spare parts purchased in Europe.

He added that there was the problem caused by 30 per cent devaluation of the naira against the euro and the dollar.

Yehuda said that all these escalated the expenditures in the terminal and made it impossible to increase incomes.

He expressed concern that government, for unknown reasons, did not allow the terminal operators to increase their charges from inception, while other stakeholders had increased theirs.  

“If we do not do this (increase terminal charges), we will have a problem of future development. The terminal operators are port stakeholders with the biggest investment,’’ Yehuda said.

The TICT boss, however, said that the current average cargo dwell time at the terminal is about 24 days, while in any other terminals in the World it was three to four days.  He said that importers should not turn the terminal to a warehouse, urging them to take their cargoes out immediately.  “Otherwise, we will not be able to discharge additional cargo and it may harm the Nigerian economy and create port congestion,’’ he added.

He said many challenges were confronting the management of the terminal, especially the issue of low charges.

Yehuda said the prevailing charges were too low because those were charges in place since the last five years when the concession of the ports began in 2006. He said that another challenge was access road to the terminal, which he described as “very bad.’’

He lauded the appointment of Alhaji Omar Suleiman as the new Managing Director of NPA. ‘‘With his support, everything concerning port activities will improve,’’ he said.

The Tide reports that TICT is one of the 26 terminals concessioned in 2006 by government to private terminal operators.