National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), on Wednesday, appealed to government for support on human capacity development of its members.
The National President, Mr Increase Uche, made the appeal in Lagos.
According to him, the training will equip the staff and help them achieve optimum benefits in the implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
The main objectives of AfCFTA include: to create a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments, and thus pave the way for accelerating the establishment of the Customs Union.
The AfCFTA is also expected to enhance competitiveness at the industry and enterprise level. through exploitation of opportunities for large scale production, continental market access and better reallocation of resources.
Uche said that the training would enable his members to work effectively with standards and help them operate at the same level with their counterparts in the world.
“Independent freight forwarders do not have the wherewithal to push themselves forward, as they are constrained by cash.
“We are ready to adopt AfCFTA; what we need is capacity development.
“We need government support for us to operate on the same level with our counterparts overseas.
“Kenya, Ivory Coast, South Africa, are almost ahead of us in terms of Logistics Performance Index, so government needs to do something in the area of ease of doing business, to enable us operate at level that we can compete favourably.
“We are preparing for AfCFTA, we are equal to the task in terms of training, we know what to do but we equally need government support for us to move ahead,” he said.
Uche urged that the training could be under the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), whose object clause is to ensure that freight forwarders are trained and given the proficiency to manage the supply chain properly.
He pointed out that as technology was almost taking over all processes, automated and others, it was only through training that they would be at par and speed with the current trend in the industry.
Uche said that technology was an area that something needed to be done very urgently, adding that they cannot do it on their own.
He said that financial support from government would help them tremendously in their businesses and prevent them from continuously being ordinary document facilitators.
“We cannot continue to do documentation alone, we need to build assets, we need to be a third party logistics service provider and have structures.
“We need government intervention to enable us get to that level because independent freight forwarders cannot compete with these national freight forwarding companies with bare hands, so financial support is very key.
“All these put in place will enable us to take part effectively in AfCFTA,” he said.
