Agro Exporters Lose $25m to Apapa Traffic

• Agro Exporters Lose $25m to Apapa Traffic

Traffic congestion along Apapa Ports link roads is costing agro-exporters approximately $25 million in losses in productivity, following delay in shipment. Last year, cashew export provided revenue of $253 million to the economy.

The figure is expected to dip with exporters struggling to access the ports. This is despite the fact that cashew exporters this year increased annual volume meant for export to 170, 000 metric tons from 160,000 tons.

Publicity Secretary, National Cashew Association of Nigeria (NCAN), Mr. Sotonye Anga said the farmers have cultivated more land with a view to boosting exports to raise annual earnings. He said this was not going to be possible with traffic challenges.

Speaking after a news conference in Lagos yesterday, Anga said traffic congestion increased the time each vehicle spends on the road as cargo meant for exports now spend an average of seven days on the road.

He said exports have grown in the last two years due to surging demand in the United States and Europe but the industry has not got a boost in terms of improvement in storage and transport facilities.

President, NCAN, Tola Fasheru said agro exporters have suffered wastages of commodities due to inadequate cold storage, supply chain infrastructure and delayed transportation time to Apapa ports.

Despite the hardship, Faseru said a terminal operator, APMT has increased its terminal charges.

He said APMT increased its charges from N4000 to N40,000 for 20 ft. containers, and N6,000 to N60,000 for a40 ft. containers.

“This is an increase of almost 1000 per cent. All the excess collections should be refunded back to exporters.This increase is not supportive of the economic diversification of the Federal Government,” he said.

Because of the challenge of getting access to the port, Faseru said an exporter that can ship 1,700 tons of commodities per day when the Apapa port access roads were in good condition now manages to only ship between 100 to 25 tons of commodities which he lamented is bad for business. “Our drivers are idling away on Apapa road, waiting in their trucks for as long as seven days to get into the port as against four hours,” he said.

Faseru urged the government to expedite work on the repairs of the road to prevent lost time and productivity.