Ship owners to evolve policy on maritime industry
The African Ship owners Association (ASA) on Monday said it would evolve a policy on how to
drive the maritime industry in the continent.
drive the maritime industry in the continent.
The President of the association, Mr Temisan Omatseye, stated this during a conference on `African Cargo for African Ship owners,’ organised by the association in Lagos.
“We are preparing the paper for the African Heads of Government’s Meeting in March 2016 in Lome.
“It will cover the issue of maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea; issue of maritime security in the Gulf of Aden; issue of cargo availability; and everything else.
“The Heads of Government will go back to their ministers of transport to come out with a clear cut policy that will drive the African Maritime industry, ‘’Omatseye said.
He said the concern of the body remained that a lot of cargo were leaving Africa and coming to Africa, but Africans had no ship carrying it.
Omatseye said it was important to inform the heads of government how much Africa was losing and the need to change its trading terms.
“What that means is this- any good being exported from Africa should be on Cost and Freight basis; which means we own the cargo, we decide how it goes.
“Goods we are importing, would be on Free On Board (FOB) which means leave the goods at your port, we will send down our ships to collect it,’’ the ship owner said.
He said the new initiative, if adopted, would create a lot of jobs for Africa’s unemployed youths.
“ Why am I saying so? It is because we have a lot of our youths who are unemployed, who are not trained as seafarers.
“We are trying to bring them back to get jobs. Trying to create jobs so that our people will not keep running away to Europe and other places,’’ Omatseye said.
The ship owner said that lack of audit of the number of cargo leaving Africa was a major challenge.
He said it was important to get the audit of cargo leaving Africa and the amount of money being paid on insurance.
Omatseye said the information would now serve as a guide to pursue a plan which could bring maritime business back to Africa.
