The Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, said on Sunday the Lekki Deep Seaport in Lagos State would begin full commercial activities in September.
The minister, who disclosed this during the inspection of the Lekki Deep Seaport site in Lagos, described the project as a huge achievement for President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Amaechi said the project would inject at least $360billion to the Nigerian economy when completed.
He said: “As a layman I cannot talk in terms of percentage. I can only say that I am impressed compared to the last time we came here.
“I am being told by the management that by June, they are expecting cranes and by September, like we agreed, they should commence commercial activities. I am happy.
“This is a privately funded project, over time they will collect their revenue from commercial activities before they hand over to the Federal Government through the Nigeria Port Authority (NPA).
“Obviously taxes will be collected here, even then, they will pay taxes.
“I doubt there is tax exemption, so we will collect taxes and I must say that the confidence in giving them the project is because of the taxes that we will collect.”
“The project will contribute about $360 billion over the years. It sounds much, but we actually need more of that money to accomplish what we want to achieve.
“The growth of the economy will put pressure on the expansion of the project.
“The argument we have in cabinet is that the need for Lekki is as a result of the fact that the demand for port activities have exceeded the supply of Tin Can and Apapa ports around Lagos.
“We have more ports than the country needs for now because manufacturing is a big problem in Nigeria coupled with the fact that this is the first seaport in Nigeria.
“Right here you have 16.5meters drought which is good for the country but the country needs more than just one.
”This is because they no longer manufacture those 11meters vessels, they now go between 16 meters and above. So, we need just more than Lagos deep seaport.”