Maritime Chief Makes Case For Local Equipment Manufacture

A maritime executive in
Port Harcourt, Chief Obi Chima has called for efforts to be intensified in the manufacturing of maritime equipment in Nigeria to boost operations.
Obi who was speaking in an interaction with The Tide in Port Harcourt, said that despite the large scale of Maritime activities in Nigeria,  operators still depend heavily on imported marine equipment to meet their maintenance schedule.
He said that investment in the local production of low technology marine equipment such as safety gears, marine ropes, pyrotechnics among others will be profitable.
According to him “the growing prominence of Nigeria maritime centre has continued to heighten the imperative to build a composite service capacity that would serve as a one-stop shipping and maritime services centre to the international shipping community.”
He stated that this condition is the motive and force that propelling NIMASA as an agency of government in its determination at encouraging private sector investment to provide maritime cluster services.
Obi, who was the former chairman of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) Rivers Seaport, posited that the vision 2020 is a growth based socio-economic development agenda.
According to him, the pursuit of this goal is expected to mobilize and deploy enormous human and material resources, which would lead to dramatic expansion of the economy and invariably induce exponential growth in business.

Corlins Walter