The Executive Secretary, Nigerian Shippers’ Council, Mr Hassan Bello has urged the Federal Government to incorporate electronic commerce into the nation’s international maritime trade transactions to boost the economy.
He said the plurality of international carriage of goods regime is affecting the nation’s international maritime trade negatively and urged the government to support the implementation of the Rotterdam Rules which could be said to be as near perfect as possible.
Bello said that Nigeria, needs to ratify the Rotterdam Rules to make it legal for cargo carriage to and from the country’s territorial waters.
Speaking with The Nation after addressing over 800 participants on Wednesday, at Validation Colloquium organised by the Federal Ministry of Transportation, in collaboration with Union of African Shippers’ Council (UASC) and United Nations Commission on International Trade Law ( UNCITRAL) in Abuja, Bello noted that there is a hotchpotch of international rules for carriage of goods by sea, which has created a great deal of muddled confusion and uncertainties.
Bello urged the government to support the ratification and domestication of the Rotterdam Rules, a new international trade instrument, he said, would address the confusion, uncertainties and other challenges in the law of carriage of goods by sea.
He said that the ratification of the Rotterdam Rules would give Nigeria and other countries in the Central and West Africa sub-region the hope of operating a more unified, more balanced and modern carriage regime and urged the governments in the region to ratify the rules.
He said, the Rotterdam Rules provided more benefits and opportunities to the shipping community than their predecessors, hence the need for Nigeria and its peers in the region to adopt and ratify it.
The Shippers’ Council boss said the plurality of international carriage of goods regime is affecting international trade negatively and urged the government to support the implementation of the Rules which could be said to be as near perfect as possible.
The 25 countries that signed the Rules, he said, represents over 25 per cent of world trade volume and are mixture of developed and developing countries.
Bello said the Rotterdam Rules were developed to cure the various defects identified in The Hague/Visvi and the Hamberg Rules.
He said there are many benefits for shippers and for carriers in the Rotterdam Rules. He urged the government to look beyond the “zero sum” game, and see the enormous benefits that the new global regime offers to all stakeholders in the maritime industry.
He said failure to ratify the rules will mean a continuation of the cumbersome and costly status quo – or worse – for many years to come