Dala, Funtua dry ports to take off before July- ICRC

The Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) has said that the Inland Container Depot (ICDs) in Funtua, Katsina State and in Dala Kano State are expected to be ready and commence operations before July 2022.

The Acting Director-General of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Mr. Michael Ohiani, who disclosed this on Thursday said the decision for the two ICDs to urgently commence operations was reached at a meeting of ICRC, the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) and the ICD concessionaires.

He said the Dala Inland Dry Port, Kano has a capacity for 20, 000 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEUs), and Funtua Dry Port, Kastina State with 10, 000 TEUs capacity.

The meeting, which was at the instance of ICRC sought to find solutions to the factors hindering the completion of the dry ports whose contracts were signed since 2006.

Ohiani noted that 16 years after the concession contracts were signed, some of the ICDs were still at five percent completion while only two had made appreciable progress.

A statement by the Acting Head, Media and Publicity, Manji Yarling, quoted Ohiani as saying, “We want to rub minds and come up with how we can make progress – what are the challenges taking into consideration that the projects have already gotten the President’s attention and more so, we need to decongest our seaports”.

The concessionaires blamed the delay on the hitches in provision of land by state governments; lack of narrow-gauge rail lines in and out of the dry ports which they noted was important to make the operation of the ports efficient; as well as, difficulties in accessing funds from banks.

In view of the delay in execution, the concessionaires stressed the need for a new agreement, pointing out that an agreement started in 2017 between them and NSC but it was yet to be cleared by the Federal Ministry of Justice on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transportation.

Managing Director of Equatorial Marine Oil and Gas Ltd, Usman Abbas informed the ICRC team that the Funtua port was already at over 85 per cent completion and was ready to launch before the end of the second quarter of 2022.

Managing Director, of the Dala Inland Dry Port Ltd., concessionaires of the Kano Inland Port, Ahmed Rabiu also hinted that the construction of the container depot was already nearing completion.  He assured that the company was working assiduously to ensure project completion and take off before the end of March 2022.