Container throughout to rise as 31 ships line up for berthing 1st week of Feb.
Indications have emerged that the reform policies of the current managing director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Usman have started yielding results as incoming vessel traffic in the month of February which will translate to cargo throughput will surpass last month.
From the latest report of the Shipping Position released by the agency, 31 ships are expected to discharge their content between first and second week of this month, a marked difference from activities in the last six months.
In fact industry analysts say with the report, February may see the highest number of vessels calling at the port in a period of one week since April 2016.
According to the details, out of the 31 vessels, 13 containerised ships are expected to call at APM Terminals and two vessels laden with general cargoes expected to berth at ENL Terminals between February 5 and 6.
Before the end of this week, jetties at Apapa will rake in about 141,807MT of the premium motor spirit, popularly known as petrol, from five vessels and this will rubbish the rumours of possible scarcity of the product.
Just as four more vessels with PMS are hanging at the high sea waiting for berthing space, both ABTL and GDNL terminals are expected to receive five of the bulk carriers to berth before the end of first week of this month.
Two vessels laden with 50,000MT of steel products are also expected to berth at the ENL Terminals within the period.
ABTL will receive two vessels carrying 10,500MT of base oil. Two vessels, each laden with about 33,000MT of bulk salt and 46,000MT of bulk sugar are expected to arrive at GDNL Terminals before Sunday.
A top official of the NPA who pleaded anonymity said “I think this month statistics has shown a sign that the economy is on recovery stretch, the only thing we need to do as an agency is to step up our game at the ports to ensure activities and support services”.
“In the last six months, we have not seen such an encouraging figures of ships coming in our manifest it means that things are getting better after all.
