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NACCIMA rallies support for Sealink project

By BusinessNews Staff on December 8, 2013

Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), says it fully supports the setting up of a shipping company, known as Sealink project, that would assuage the challenges of moving goods within the West and Central African sub-region.

National President of the Association, Alhaji Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, who gave the commitment of the association at the sensitisation mission on the Sealink project 2013 recently, said the Project, if fully actualised, will provide for a huge market within the region.

He said the success of the company would bring about an enhanced capacity building in international trade and structured trade financing; increase in intra-regional trade flow, create job and investment opportunities thereby meeting one of the Federal Government economic objectives and transformation agenda.

He also noted that travelling by road or connecting flights amongst the West African states had always been a nightmare to private sector operators considering the challenges of roadblocks by security agencies and other law enforcement agencies on the road, and connection of flight from one West African State to the other. He added that the transportation of goods and persons by sea along the West African Coast line with an extension to Central Africa, which had not been tapped before, will provide for a huge market when it is fully operational.

Apart from this, Abubakar said the challenges being faced when goods and persons are being transported due to the lengthy time of freight and the attendant high cost due to the absence of direct shipping line plying the West and Central African corridor, will be a thing of the past.

He said it was as a result of this that the Chambers of Commerce in the West African States under the auspices of Federation of the West Africa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FEWACCI), in a bid to overcome these challenges, the Sealink project, which he said requires partnering with other investing partners to ensure its actualisation.

“As the apex business association in Nigeria, NACCIMA is supporting the setting up of the shipping company as we did during the establishment of Ecobank Transnational, which has become a household name in all African States and beyond,” he said.

He called on chieftains of industry to take the ample opportunity provided by the programme to participate in sourcing $36 million that would form the equity capital required to set up the transnational shipping company.

[Daily Independent]

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