NPA pledges to tackle leakages, unveils new invoicing system

AS part of measures to tackle revenue leakages and ensure efficiency, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) yesterday unveiled new Revenue Invoicing Management System (RIMS).

According to NPA, the initiative forms part of ongoing automation process aimed at sustaining growth and enhance its revenue base.

The agency had in February and September 2014, introduced Electronic Payment System and the Electronic Ship Entry Notice (E-Sen) respectively “as a first step towards full automation of our processes”.

Unveiling the RIMS option yesterday, the Managing Director of NPA, Habib Abdullahi, explained that the ongoing automation process will ensure business growth and high performance.

Explaining further, Abdullahi said: “This is evident from statistics which have shown that cargo throughput increased from 46,150,518 metric tons in 2006 to 86,603,903 metric tons in 2014 indicating an 87 per cent increase during that period which is due in part to our continued efforts at improving processes”.

Abdullahi said the introduction of this system has the potential to improve NPA’s service offering, “improve our partner relationship, create efficient payment method, maximize revenue and minimize loss associated with fraud and revenue leakage”.

He said ports operations involve a network of processes and documentations along the chain of activities from the port of loading to the port of destination.

According to Abdullahi, effective coordination of the activities makes the integration of the processes through automation absolutely necessary in order to facilitate seamless operations thereby reducing both costs and time.

The NPA boss who challenged stakeholders to key into the process of automation said NPA is presenting the Revenue Invoicing Management System and Customer Portal that will lower operational cost and shorten the time for documentation.