Why cargoes to Nigeria are expensive, by SAHCOL MD

The low export business in Nigeria has led to the exorbitant charges by cargo airlines operating to Nigeria, the Managing Director of Skyway Aviation Handling Company Limited (SAHCOL), Rizwan Kadri has said.
 
Consequently, the airlines charge double goods coming into the country because they hardly have goods to take out of the country. This has seriously affected cost of transporting goods t[ the country by air.

Investigations also revealed that charges accruable to the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) during cargo clearance at the ports atone more for the expensive nature of Nigeria’s airports.
 
Sachol
The SAHCOL chief stated that there is need for government to immediately encourage the business by supporting farmers with grants and facilities, adding that Nigeria is losing export business to Ghana because the country offers competitive freight charges and does higher level of export compared to Nigeria.
 
His words, “In terms encouraging export, especially perishable goods, we are ready to align with government vision. We are ready to support that plan; we are ready to go the extra mile to support the farmers but government has to do a lot in that direction”.
 
 Kadri noted that export would have been a good business, but regretted that lack of packaging facilities, lack of and grants to farmers, disclosing that , “ we are really losing this business to Ghana because yams that are exported from Nigeria to Ghana and packaged with ‘made in Ghana’ for onward export to Europe”.
 
Kadri, who disclosed that the company in 2015, handled 31million tons of cargo and in 2016, 35 million tons, lamented that the export business would have been very good and profitable in Nigeria but for lack of packaging facilities in the country.
 
He further disclosed that for 2017, SAHCOL will keep enhancing sales level, improve infrastructure to meet demands and improve products and services, adding, ‘we have put some strategies in place to re-invent some things’.
According to him, the impact of the challenges vis-à-vis dollar scarcity and others that resulted from the economic recession was huge, but noted that the company was able to achieve a lot of things.
 
He described 2016 as a challenging year, adding that a lot of things were achieved rather slowly, saying it could have done much better.
 
 “It could have been worse but thanks to strong team and fantastic facilities we have in place.  We did manage to get on, it was still a good year for us but not as expected, because of dollar scarcity, import fell, the impact is huge but we look forward to 2017 to be great”, he said.
 
Kadri, who said the company now handles 17 airlines, said it lost Emirates and United Airlines, not to non-performance but for scarcity of dollar which made United to leave Nigeria, stressing adding that Emirates promised to come back .
 
While commending federal government over plans to close Abuja Airport for runway repairs, he said SAHCOL will definitely lose a lot because many of the foreign airlines have refused to fly into Kaduna.
 
“We are happy for the repairs but many loopholes were not taken into consideration from stakeholders, especially ground handling companies. We are going to lose a lot. If we realise between N70 million to N80 million from Abuja in a month, then we are going to lose that, we are going to pay staff too, it’s a huge burden on us”, he said.
 
On the helicopter that was impounded by Custom at SAHCOL shed, Kadri said SAHCOL is only a service provider, adding that it needs to recover about N70 million on that business but lamented that the company does not even know who will pay for the services.
 
Wole Shadare