DISBURSEMENT OF CVFF LIKELY TO COMMENCE IN SIX MONTHS TIME – BASHIR JAMOH
By Mcanthony Onuoha
The Director- General of Nigerian Maritime Administration
and Safety Agency, NIMASA, Dr. Bashir Jamoh, has again reassured that the bottleneck around the disbursement of the Carbotage Vessel Financing Fund(CVFF) would no longer be there in six months time.
Dr. Jamoh disclosed this when playing host to the Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Shipping, Mr. Panos Gliatis, who was accompanied by key members of the Nigerian Chambers of Shipping (NCS) to NIMASA headquarters in Apapa, Lagos on Tuesday.
The NIMASA DG described the yet to be disbursed CVFF as one of the major catalysts that would drive the success of the nation’s blue economy, passionately appealed to relevant stakeholders to return to the drawing board and fashion out how the sector would be revived so that shipowners could acquire vessels to enable the teaming youths secure jobs so as to reduce insecurity and other criminalities.
According to Jamoh, ” to address the bottlenecks, we have other Private Lending Institutions (PLIs) that will come in and compete with the others that we have, and we have also gone far in the establishment of maritime bank”.
” I believe that with your arrival as new MD, we would take off this discussion from here and see how fast we can move to start disbursement.”
” It is interesting that NNPC had agreed to be off takers of these vessels because one thing is to have vessels, another is to have the cargo, if you don’t have the cargo, the ships become useless. The essence of CVFF is to promote job creation and expansion of the industry, and with you coming onboard, l think we can draw an action plan to see how we can move forward and be sure that we record a milestone within the next six months.”
Continuing, the DG said that the target of the industry was to surpass the seven percent contribution of Singapore to ensure a viable blue economy as he lamented that the shipping industry contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was less than one percent.
” We have been having discussion with your predecessors and this was centered on issues of disbursement of the CVFF and at that time, the NNPC promised to provide detailed terms of ships we intend to procure”.
” The guidelines provide that NIMASA will provide 50 percent of the cost of the Vessel, the PLIs , the banks will provide 35 percent while the beneficiary will provide 15 percent. This is a way of trying to protect public funds and to remove ourselves from the previous experience of shipping frauds”.
According to Jamoh, ” it was at that juncture that the NNPC Shipping agreed to take off nine percent from the beneficiaries and these beneficiaries will pay six percent and our discussion did not stop at what they can contribute. We will also involve them in strengthening the interest rate.”
” We have gone far and the disagreement now is that the PLIs are insisting on the interest rate of 7.5 percent while NIMASA and NNPC Shipping are saying that they will only pay 6.5 percent,” he said.
Dr. Jamoh assured that there would be further discussion with the Managing Director of NNPC Shipping on the issue so as to fast track the disbursement of the fund.
He said that government decided to establish a ministry that would bring up policies that would ensure the development of shipping and other related activities to assist the blue economy to thrive.
The DG of NIMASA further explained that the establishment of the Marine and Blue Economy ministry by the Federal Government was to concentrate more on the gains and benefits of blue economy, adding that the collaboration with the NNPC Shipping came at the right time.
He noted that from their analysis, there was a decline in turnaround of vessels coming in and out of Nigeria as a result of many factors.
In his response, Mr. Gliatis noted that the visit was to ensure cooperation between stakeholders in the industry for economic growth and development.
In his words, ” this is not a new partnership but just to continue with what we had in the past. Obviously, situation has changed in NNPC and there is a new government, we need to see the jobs that have been done so far as well as opportunities and agree on the path for the future”, he said.
In his reaction, Mr. Aminu Umar, President, NCS, noted that shipowners under the auspices of the NCS had an interactive session with the NNPC Shipping on Shipping guidelines .
He was optimistic that the disbursement of the funds would create jobs opportunities that would strengthen economic growth.
