Cabotage: BOI to take over N80bn CVFF disbursement —NISA

The Nigerian Ship-Owners Association (NISA) has revealed that the Federal Government informed it that the Bank of Industry (BOI) will now disburse the more than N80 billion Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF).

It will be recalled that the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has been in custody of the CVFF, as part of its statutory role of warehousing the two per cent surcharge on all Cabotage contracts of indigenous ship-owners in Nigeria, and was expected to disburse the funds in recent past.

Speaking to the Nigerian Tribune exclusively in his office in Lagos, President of NISA, Mallam Aminu Umar explained that the Federal Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi revealed to ship-owners that the BOI will be taking over the disbursement of the CVFF from NIMASA.

According to Aminu Umar, “Following series of engagement between ship-owners and the Federal Ministry of Transport over the CVFF, the minister informed us at a forum that the funds will be given to the BOI to disburse to us.

“We are expecting the minister to hand it over to the BOI as he promised so that disbursement can begin. Before the disbursement, the BOI will have to do the verification, so that whoever wishes to apply for the funds will do that through the bank.

“Although there is no timeline to the disbursement, we are going to start engaging the Ministry again this year to ensure that they disburse the funds as promised. We know the minister wants to come up with a timetable; we are eagerly waiting for that so that we can follow up on his plans.”

On the proposed national carrier being put in place by the Federal Government with Singaporean partners and the fear that a monopoly might hijack the 60 per cent reserved for Nigerian ship-owners in the arrangement, Umar explained that he expects the bidding process to be fair and transparent.

In his words, “We need to first understand that the national carrier being put in place by the Federal Government is a business venture. And the fact that it is a business venture means only people with the required capital can put their money in it.

“We cannot say that we want to set up a business venture and allow people with no capital to manage it. If we do that, then who finances the business? Remember that the 60 per cent capital reserved for Nigerian ship-owners to invest is the ship-owners own money.

“The company is expected to be able to source for funds from financial institutions like banks, capital market etc when it starts operation.

“The process will be an open and transparent one. The committee in charge of the project has recommended transaction advisers who will make it public. Whoever in Nigeria who wants to invest, either a ship-owner or a non ship-owner, has the right to apply.

“There is no possibility of a monopoly. It is only when anybody cannot bring in the required funds, then whoever is able to bring in the required funds cannot be stopped from doing so. It will be open to everybody to participate.

“We expect the chairman of the committee, in the person of the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) to brief everybody on the project maybe by the end of the first quarter of this year.

“We are talking of a company that will be buying assets, that is very expensive ships; so it will need capital to cover the 60 per cent even though the 40 per cent will be coming from the Singaporean partners. So the 60 per cent must come from Nigerians who have the ability to raise such funds.”