By Albert Akota
The Minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has expressed satisfaction with the pace of work on the Lekki Deep Sea Port project and said the project will contribute $360 billion to GDP in 45 years.
Amaechi who disclosed this after an inspection of the project yesterday in Lagos along side permanent secretary ministry of Transportation Dr Magdalene Ajani and a team from the Nigeria Ports Authority as well as Nigeria Shippers council said there is need to extend its traffic for efficient services delivery.
“I think we need to talk with Lagos management again, let’s see how to re-orientate them because actually there need for extension which we must not ignore.
“Now that there are 5,000 persons we need to have the discussion with the community, we need to have a conversion with the Lagos state government and make provisions for their reorientation”.
Responding to questions concerning the source of funding he clarified that the project is privately funded.
“This is a privately funded project, over time they will collect their revenue from the commercial activities before they hand over to the federal government.
But obviously taxes will be collected here even them will pay taxes, but I’m not sure there was any taxes mentioned in the agreement.
“I doubt there is tax exemption, so we will collect taxes here, but we must say the confidence in giving them the project is because of the taxes that we collect here that will help in the construction of other projects”.
The Minister said the project will be completed by June while commercial activities will take off in September 2022.
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