Eunice Orike
Nigerian export promotion council, NEPC, has disclosed that the establishment of an export trade house in Egypt will improve value addition on Nigeria’s non-oil export through cleaning, processing distribution and marketing and also increase the country’s exports by 40 percent.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria’s non-oil export stood at N1.4tn in 2021.
Executive director of NEPC, Ezra Yakusak, Speaking during an “advocacy programme on leveraging on export trade house to boost export from Nigeria in Abuja, said that the NEPC established the trade houses under a Public Private Partnership PPP, arrangement.
According to him, the “export trade house” is an initiative of the Council to have a central location where Made-in Nigeria products can be shipped, displayed and distributed to different parts of the world.
“This in turn will lead to economies of scale, international foothold in finding new customers and managing currency risks. All of which gives an exporter an advantage over his counterparts. The official opening of the Export Trade House was a major event that attracted officials from both Nigerian and Egyptian governments.”
“The council intends to establish the export trade houses in different centres around the globe namely Cairo in Egypt, Nairobi in Kenya and Johannesburg in South Africa. Others are Hunan in China, Ottawa in Canada, Saudi Arabia and Lome Togo. These are to cover export activities in the various regions of the world being targeted by Nigeria,” he added.
Furthermore, thev NEPC boss explained that the initiative will help Nigeria take maximum advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement AfCFTA.
Other objectives of the trade house according to him would be to ; Enhance the visibility of made-in-Nigeria products outside the Nigerian shores; Reduce the cost of logistics on the Nigerian Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs, Increase Nigeria share in the targeted markets; Create employment for our teeming youths and Increase forex inflow into the Nigerian economy.
Chief operating officer, Agriverdi Cairo Ghazwan Mousallati, in his remarks noted that his partnership agreement with the NEPC is to ensure that intended goods for exportation are well packaged and presented to meet global standard
“There is a huge potential for the trade house to work if we continue to support the local traders. NEPC chose to partner with us in order to ensure that goods that are being shipped are paid for and no default in quality. The goods are well inspected to ensure that they do not damage the reputation of the Nigerian commodities,” he said.
