*As contract expires in August
*NPA plans to cut service charge by 50%
Vincent Toritseju
Lagos — SEVENTY marine companies have signified interest to take over the service boat contract across the territorial waters on Nigeria’s eastern oil region. This followed the indication that the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, would not renew the existing contract with the multinational oil logistics firm, Intels, when it expires in August 2020.
Disclosing this to Vanguard Maritime Report, Managing Director of the NPA, Ms Hadiza Bala Usman, added that the agency has concluded plans to reduce the percentage of the revenue to be charged by the service providers.
According to her before now, Intels was charging 28 percent but the NPA management has decided to bring that down to about 15 percent, almost 50 percent crash.
The NPA boss explained that the service boat revenue collection contract has been broken down to four pilotage districts adding that evaluation of the applications would be concluded this week.
She stated: “We withdrew our termination notice (to Intels) and now issued an advert to engage another company that will provide the service because their (Intels’) contract will come to an end in August 2020 and we have received over 70 applications.
“But what we did also is that we put the contracts in different lots. Previously, it was lumped together and given to Intels and it was collecting and charging government 28 percent for collecting the revenue.
“In this instance, we are going to peg down the percentage the service provider will charge to 15 percent and we have broken down coverage area to four pilotage districts and in the advert, you can only bid for one, you cannot bid for two or more as that will enable us have more competition, and so we will have more clarity on what will be happening in that area of our operations.”
On whether Intels bidded, Usman said that the Authority has not evaluated adding evaluation will take place this week saying: “Intels I am sure will bid but we are doing a transparent tender process and have the best company emerged with the understanding and the full compliance with TSA (Treasury Single Account).”