Posted on November 14, 2016
The Chairman, Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, Emmanuel Adesoye, says the Federal Government plans to dredge the Calabar Port to enable large vessels berth and do business.
Mr. Adesoye made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Calabar on Wednesday.
“We have seen most of these facilities. They are excellent facilities. They are opportunities waiting to be tapped.
“We know that these are areas that can really help Nigeria in terms of incomes, especially foreign currencies, if properly developed.
“There are also challenges. For example, the one we see is the draft situation in this area; it’s a little bit shallow; we need to do a lot of dredging.
“We need to make it accessible for big ships that can come here and do business with us.
Mr. Adesoye expressed the hope that the dredging of the Calabar channel would begin as soon as possible.
“One of the greatest incentives is to make sure that the draft line is okay for ships to come in here.
“That is the greatest, because when is there, there are business people that are willing to trade with us.
“We want to trade with the others and we are going to have to do a lot of information sharing so that people will now know that this place is ready for ships to come on board here.
“That is one of the things we are going to do and then security wise, I think we are going to work on the security also to make people believe that this area is safe to transact business.
“If you read my acceptance speech during the inauguration, I think the passage of that bill is one of the cardinal points we mention in that thing.
“That this board will be willing to work with the National Assembly to make the passage of the bill as quickly as possible.
“We are going to work on it definitely.”
The NPA chair stressed the need to go back to the drawing board as quickly as possible to make the Calabar port more viable economically.
Source: Premium Times
