Nigeria maritime boost: FG orders fast-track disbursement of $700m vessel fund

The Nigerian government has ordered maritime authorities and commercial lenders to accelerate the processing and release of the multi-million-dollar Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF), in a bid to resolve more than two decades of administrative delays.

Adegboyega Oyetola, Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, directed the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to work directly with 12 approved Primary Lending Institutions (PLIs) to fast-track long-overdue loan approvals for indigenous shipowners.

The intervention follows President Bola Tinubu’s formal authorization to operationalize the estimated $700 million fund. Accumulated since the passage of the Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act of 2003, the CVFF was created to provide low-interest, long-term financing for local operators to purchase modern ships and build fleet capacity.

Despite thousands of applications and decades of promises, administrative red tape and bank fine-tuning have prevented domestic shipowners from accessing the capital, leaving coastal and offshore shipping contracts heavily dominated by foreign vessel operators.

The bottleneck in numbers

Government figures show that while domestic interest in the fund remains high, official processing through commercial banks has progressed at a crawl.

NIMASA has received 92 formal funding applications from indigenous shipowners since the launch of a dedicated digital portal. Of those:

• 20 applications have been screened and forwarded to the 12 participating commercial banks for credit risk evaluations.
• Only 1 application has successfully completed the bank review process and been returned to NIMASA for final ministerial approval.

Under the agreed framework, qualified local operators can access up to $25 million per project. Shipowners are required to provide 15% in equity, while NIMASA supplies 50% from the fund, and the commercial banks finance the remaining 35% while assuming the credit risk.

The government is framing the release of the funds as a critical catalyst for economic diversification, job creation, and maritime sovereignty.

In a statement issued through his Special Adviser, Bolaji Akinola, Minister Oyetola emphasized that ending the 20-year stagnation was vital for localizing value within the domestic blue economy.

“The operationalization of the CVFF is a critical step towards strengthening indigenous participation in Nigeria’s maritime industry and unlocking the full economic potential of the blue economy,” Oyetola said.

The ministry projects that deploying the capital to acquire modern vessels will retain revenue currently lost to foreign chartering services and stimulate domestic marine infrastructure.

“This initiative has the potential to generate more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs across shipyards, marine engineering firms, and maritime logistics companies, while strengthening Nigeria’s domestic ship-owning and shipbuilding ecosystem,” the minister added.

With 20 applications now under active review by commercial lenders including Zenith Bank and eleven other participating institutions, local shipowners are watching closely to see if the minister’s directive will finally translate into physical vessels on Nigerian waters.