The reluctance of shipping companies in evacuating empty containers has been traced to the high-cost implication, amounting to about 20 per cent of their operational costs.
Vice President of Freight Forwarders Consultative Forum, FFCF, and immediate past National President of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders, NAGAFF, Mr. Uche Increase, disclosed this while speaking at a freight forwarders’ summit in Lagos.
Increase also frowned at shipping companies’ delay in the refund of container deposits paid by importers and their agents as a result of the financial benefits accruing to them.
He said this might be a way of augmenting the cost of evacuating the empty containers, stressing further that the term, ‘container deposit’, is only applicable to Nigeria.
