The Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, has emphasized the need for port process automation to reduce business costs in Nigeria.
Speaking during a recent media chat with editors in Lagos, Oyetola noted that some port-related costs do not contribute to government revenue but instead reflect systemic inefficiencies.
“If you want to be able to automate your processes, then we need the cost to come down, because sometimes some of these costs are not actually costs or revenue to governments; it is the problem of the system. We will have to do a lot of modifications; we will have to reduce the cost. For instance, NPA has not reviewed costs for the past 32 years, so it is not a balance,” he said.
He stated that the government plans to reduce the number of port agents to seven to enhance operational efficiency.
He however recognized that some agencies have legitimate authorization to operate at the ports.
“When we make proper recommendations, we become team-dependent, so we know that the possibility of a risk is reducing when counting to seven. Our ultimate goal is the ability to reduce the amount of work, like what I was telling you; most of them are also involved, but we are still working on that; we can’t do this without the concurrence of the Federal Government.
“We need to achieve that. The second one we have to do is, we know the reduction of the cost of clearance of boats, and we need to oppose that,” he said.
