KEY POINTS
- FG wants to deal with regulatory and bureaucratic inefficiencies that increase the cost of exports and lower the international competitiveness.
- Nigerian service exporters enjoy government support to leverage foreign exchange.
- The Nigerian Export Promotion Council is dedicated to simplifying the export process by reducing the paperwork, and making procedures easy to understand.
In response, the Federal Government of Nigeria is moving quickly to eliminate regulatory and bureaucratic overheads that have helped push up the cost of export making Nigerian goods less competitive on the global markets.
The Minister for Industry, Trade, and Investment, Jumoke Oduwole, announced this in Lagos after a ministerial consultation session she held with the country’s top 100 exporters.
She highlighted long standing refusal by some regulatory agencies such as Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to release Certificates of Conformity (COC) to local manufacturers and exporters.
One of the government’s priorities is the export growth, and emphasis on the promotion of exports sector was one of the dominant motives for drafting the NAFTA agreement and the government’s ongoing focus on prioritizing the export sector.
New federal government’s push to increase non oil exports
Oduwole said, Export played a critical role in the growth of the economy, employment generation and foreign exchange earnings. Better collaboration between regulatory agencies and exporters drives the need to create such an environment that is conducive to export growth, she called.
What we are equally determined to do is systematically address the bureaucratic challenges.” I have marching orders from the President, Bola Tinubu, and we’re going to deliver this for the Nigerian economy,” Oduwole said.
She also emphasized the government’s readiness to support Nigerian exporters of services to enhance earning of forex by the youth in Nigeria.
Simplified export processes
Furthermore, in an attempt to ease export procedure, the Director General of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) Nonye Ayeni, unveiled efforts in that regard.
According to Ayeni, the NECA obtained CBN’s approval to add the CFA Franc into the list of accepted currencies where export proceeds can be repatriated.
But Ayeni noted that exporters are burdened with paperwork currently — up to 23 documents are needed to obtain a Non-Oil Export Support Programme account.
The Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment will support this, it’s also intended to ease the burden on exporters and this process from NEPC.
