C/River Not Benefiting From Tank Farms, Quarries — Imoke

Cross River State does not get any revenue from the several tank farms and crushed rock quarries that litter the state since these are in the exclusive list of the Federal Government which forbids state from collecting taxes from them.

To this end the state government is to seek constitutional amendment to ensure the situation is redressed to enable the state benefit from the revenue that accrues from the projects.

Senator Liyel Imoke, who made this known in Calabar on Tuesday at the ground breaking ceremony for the Portside Industrial Park located adjacent the Nigerian Ports Authority, bemoaned the level of devastation of roads leading to the state due to the heavy trucks plying them to take petroleum products and cement from the state.

According to Imoke, the several tank farms located in the state are in the Free Export Trade Zone which exempts them from paying taxes to the state while the quarry and cement factory from which cement and crushed rocked are taken daily are in the exclusive list of the Federal Government thereby exempting them from paying tax to the state government.

Imoke said the Calabar-Ikot Ekpene Road and the Calabar- Ikom Road have become very bad because of the heavy trucks which ply the road daily to ferry products.

“The unregulated development of tank farms in the Free Trade Zone have created environmental hazard and the beauty of the state is being defaced by the heavy trucks which throng the place daily to cart petroleum products yet the state is not benefiting anything from their operations,” he said.

On the Portside Industrial Park, Imoke said the project will be a catalyst to the industrial growth of the state because of its unique services which affect the lives of virtually every Nigerian through the storage and distribution of petroleum products. He said the project which is a Private Public Partnership initiative will provide employment for thousands of Nigerians and therefore, called for the speedy completion of the project.

Engineer S. I .C Okoli, the Managing Director of WABECO Petroleum Limited, the private firm partnering with Cross River State to execute the project, said when fully operational, the Parkside will dispense three million litres of petroleum products daily.

The project he said was conceptualized in 2008, but owing to its intense nature, painstaking planning had to be undertaken and assured that in a few weeks, the place will become a different land with the level of in infrastructural development that would take place there.

 —Emma Una/ Calabar