Revive your shipping industry to gain from Blue economy, IMO tells NIMASA
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), has called on the management of Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), to face the reality of reviving Nigeria’s moribund shipping industry.
Addressing participants on Thursday, at the opening of the ongoing 4th Regional Technical Search and Rescue Committee meeting in Lagos, the Secretary General of the IMO, Mr. Kitack Lim, represented by the Regional Coordinator, West and Central Africa-Anglophone, Technical Cooperation Division, IMO, Capt. Dallas Laryea made it clear that international trade is very critical to the world’s economy with estimation of 90% of world trade and two thirds of its energy supplies carried by sea.
Currently, local shipping activities have ebbed due to non implementation of cabotage regime more than 14 years after it was introduced.
Only in August this year, NIMASA released what it described as cabotage implementation procedure which several shipping experts have condemned, saying it lacked human face and unworkable under the prevailing maritime circumstance.
Lim therefore charged the Agency to continue to support the region and urged member states of the regional SAR to continue to collaborate to ensure a safe and secure West and Central African maritime domain.
Business Hilights recalls that Nigeria is the host of the Regional Search and Rescue Coordinating Center and this is the 4th meeting of the Regional Search and Rescue Committee with attendance of member states which includes; Equatorial Guinea, Togo, Garbon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Brazzaville, Benin Republic, Cameroun, Sao Tome & Principe, Nigeria.
