President Bola Tinubu has approved the full implementation of the International Cargo Tracking Note ICTN, a brainchild of the Nigerian Shippers Council NSC, thus ending several months of speculations and suspense as to the fate of the scheme.

ICTN is an online real time cargo tracking mechanism designed to ensure the safety and accuracy of imports. The initiative is expected to provide an economic tracking tool for Nigeria, which is partly designed to mitigate revenue loss, while tracking the movement of Nigeria bound imports. It is projected to save up to N900billion annually in revenue loss, thus boosting government’s import revenue.

Executive secretary of the Council, Dr. Pius Akutah, who made the disclosure during a sectoral stakeholders’ engagement organised by the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy in Lagos, Thursday, assured that the Council was putting measures in place to facilitate its coming on stream before the end of the year.

“We have already obtained approval of Mr. President to go for the procurement process for the ICTN, and that is ongoing, and we are very hopeful that before the end of this year, we should come up with the ICTN.

“The ICTN has undergone so many set-backs, part of which was the suspension in its implementation, and this was why the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, H.E. Adegboyega Oyetola is trying to ensure that all outstanding challenges are resolved before its official takeoff.

“All of you know that we have history of implementation, suspension and all that, so the Minister is taking all necessary steps to ensure that any other implementation under his leadership would not be suspended, so all efforts is being deployed to ensure that pending issues are all resolved before the ICTN implementation begins,” Akutah told the stakeholders.