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Ololade Omosan-Agie
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency has started the digitalisation of manifests for all vessels calling at all Nigerian ports.
According to the agency, all physical transactions regarding sailing certificates and cargo manifest processing are being phased out.
It added that the automation would help in reducing human interaction, improve efficiency, and block revenue leakages.
In a statement, the Director-General of the Agency, Dr. Bashir Jamoh, was quoted as saying, “In line with the Federal Government’s Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business, we are committed to improving turnaround time of vessels, reduction of human interface in the majority of our transactions with our stakeholders and this is in our bid to ensure transparency and professionalism that the sector requires to grow.
“We have improved our operational relationship with our sister Agencies, as we speak, we have made tremendous progress in our determination to convey sailing clearance for Vessels to the NPA electronically.”
According to the agency, it now receives and processes manifest electronically which has improved its efficiency leading to improvement in the turn-around-time of vessels calling at the nation’s ports.
It added that the process of submitting and processing manifests has now been reduced from 72 hours to five hours for very large crude carriers and larger container vessels and two hours or less for smaller vessels.
