Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority NPA, Mohammed Bello-Koko has charged the management of Dala Inland Dry Port IDP, located in Kano State to take deliberate steps to promote non-oil export products in line with efforts to diversify the national economy.

The Managing Director, who was represented by the Executive Director, Marine and Operations, Hon. Onari Brown, while speaking during a working visit by the board and management of the IDP, noted that it has become expedient for all the IDPs in the country to assume the position of non-oil export centres where agro-allied products and other mineral resources could be processed and moved to the conventional seaports for onward shipment abroad.

He also noted that it would be a good idea for the IDPs to develop terminals exclusively dedicated to the handling of non-oil products to forestall delays in packaging and shipment of these export products, especially the perishable ones among them.

Bello-Koko, who assured that the management of NPA under his watch would continue to support the IDPs in order to enable them achieve the aims and objectives of setting them up, which include reducing pressure on the conventional seaports as well as taking shipping services to hinterlands of the country, disclosed that it was in line with this that the NPA also established non-oil export dedicated terminals across some seaport locations in the country.

Meanwhile, chairman of the IDP, Alhaji. Abubakar Sahabo Bawuro, while speaking earlier, said the aim of the visit was to synergise with the NPA as the landlord of the ports in the country and also to seek its support to enhance its operational efficiency.

He thanked the MD for the warm welcome accorded to him and his team, assuring that the Dala IDP would always do everything within its powers to give preference to the handling and packaging of non-oil export produce, which is crucial to the country’s quest to achieve economic diversification from its current mono-product status, which relies only on crude for foreign exchange earnings.