Non-processed products, key challenge of export promotion-NEPC

Nigeria’s inability to improve on the quality and standard of it exported primary products has constituted an impedimenttoimprovement in earnings and volume of its non-oil exports.

The Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Olusegun Awolowo disclosed this on Thursday, September 29, 2016 at the 22nd Seminar of Finance Correspondents and Business Editors  in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State.

Olusegun Awolowo who was represented at the seminar by a Director in NEPC, Barr. George Enyiekpon said the country’s non-oil export products have remained at non-processed levels and this has had limitations on the standards, quality and accruals from the sector.

In a paper: “Towards Efficient Institutional Arrangements for Non-oil Export Finance in Nigeria”, delivered at the seminar, Awolowo said the non-oil sector which holds enormous foreign exchange potentials for the country has not been fully exploited despite the country been endowed with solid minerals and agriculture.

The NEPC Executive Director also said that a 40 percent decline was recorded in the Nigeria’s export earnings. He attributed the decline to limited local content value addition, products mostly exported in the primary forms and challenges associated with poor infrastructure, power, standards, finance, skills and capacity.

With the fall in crude oil price by about 50 per cent, the NEPC believes now is the time for Nigeria to intensify efforts at diversifying the economy and maximize the potentials inherent in non-oil sector export.

Awolowo said since inception in 1976, the NEPC with the core mandate to develop, promote, assist and play a leading role in the creation of export incentives, has lived up the expectations by positioning the Nigerian export market as the growth opportunity of choice for private sector earnings and sustainable economic development.