By Asmau Ahmad
The National Action Committee on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) for Transportation, on Thursday, said transportation infrastructure deficit would not deter the country from participating in the project.
AfCFTA’s co-chairman on transportation, Ms Funmi Folorunsho in an interview with newsmen in Lagos, said Nigeria was ready and working.
Folorunsho stated that the issue of infrastructure deficit was not unique to Nigeria and that it would be tackled.
According to reports, 54 African countries, including Nigeria, ratified the trade agreement, which started on January 1.
The agreement initially requires members to remove tariffs from 90 percent of goods, allowing free access to commodities, goods, and services across the continent while the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa estimates that the agreement will boost intra-African trade by 52 percent by 2022.
The co-chairman explained that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD) report for 2020 clearly stated that for the Africa free trade area to work, the deficit in infrastructure should be looked into.
She noted that figures and details had been outlined on the report stating that the infrastructure deficit was not peculiar to Nigeria.
She added that what needed to be done was to identify the gap between the need and what was in existence, and that a need assessment must be done with a view to fill in those gaps.
“Unlike what we had when we were much younger, we had the ministry of transport and aviation, today all the modes have as it were, ministry of work is for land, aviation is for air, transport is doing maritime and the rail.
“So there must be coordination among all the modes of transport by government at public and private sector level; the three ministries must be talking with each other for the purpose of taking optimum benefit of the African free trade area.
“I know there is not much private sector involvement and participation in the rail but there is quite a beef in other modes of transportation so everyone in the private sector must work together now that we have a bigger market to trade,” she said.
She added that for transportation by land, there was the need to expand into the bigger African market and so also the rail that are being developed would be for national use and not just for few African countries.
She pointed out that aviation would be a big market, stating that Ethiopian Airline, for example, was still doing transportation service for medical and other services throughout the COVID-19 lockdown.
