Exporters in Kwara State have been sensitized on guided trade initiative (GTI) of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement to maximize their potential in exportation business.
The one-day sensitization programme held in Ilorin on Monday, themed; “Connecting Nigeria businesses to AfCFTA” was attended by the commissioners of Ministry of Business, Innovation & Technology, Mrs. Damilola Yusuf-Adelodun and her counterpart from the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, Hon. AbdulQuawiy Olododo, including sister agencies such as Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), NAFDAC, Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) , SMEDAN, Nigeria Agriculture Quarantine Service (NAQS), Shippers Council, as well as Organized Private Sector (OPS) such as the MAN, KWACCIMA, NASSIs, NASME, AFAN, FACAN, ANE etc.
Speaking in separate remarks, some of the exporters in the state, Alhaji Adebayo Ibrahim, Hajia Olaoluwa Mariam and David Isaiah, expressed appreciation to the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) for the continued sensitization programme, aimed at making export business easier.
The people, however, identified lack of adequate financial capacity, insecurity, smuggling, language barriers and cumbersome procedures to get approval from government regulatory agencies for products to be exported, as major challenges.
The exporters in the state, who also lamented bad infrastructure, especially roads and insecurity as major challenges bedevilling export business, called on relevant stakeholders to address the problems to grow the nation’s economy.
They also suggested establishment of incubation groups in each state of the federation to execute some of the suggested ideas to improve export business.
In his lecture, an assistant director in the NEPC, Mallam Aliyu Sadiq, said that guided trade initiative is an instrument the exporters can use to trade efficiently and effectively under the AfCFTA.
He said that other countries like Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya have started trading under AfCFTA using the same instrument.
“Since 2021 that Nigeria ratified the agreement, it had not been able to trade. That’s why we are also signing into the guided trade initiative and to sensitize our exporters on the need to trade under the AfCFTA to grow their economy and strengthen the capacity of our SMEs to earn foreign exchange that we need to develop our economy and our country”.
Talking on how to address bottlenecks in export business, the NEPC boss said that the government is already trying to fix infrastructural deficiency, energy sector, bad roads and insecurity, head on, through some reforms.
“Poor infrastructure etc had made exporters unproductive and not competitive because you need energy to power your machinery. The high cost of diesel would also impact on the product being produced. What that translates into is that you won’t be able to compete with other countries that have lesser requirements. So, it’s very essential for the government to tackle issues of energy, insecurity because a hungry economy is an angry economy.
“For instance, our farmers, faced with insecurity, can’t produce in such a quantity for domestic consumption and not to talk of exportation. You must have food security, food sufficiency. And government is already doing that. Service chiefs have been given a mandate to address the security challenges and I believe with time, all these will be addressed and our exporters would make even”, he said.
Speaking earlier, the state coordinator Kwara state coordinating office, Hajia Sherifat Musa, said that the sensitization programme would create awareness of AfCFTAs benefits, especially for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES) which would help to enhance the SMEs’ capacity for intra-African trade.
“Since the launch of the initiative, the NEPC has held the sensitization workshops on GTI in Sokoto and Akure. It is heart warming that the workshop is being held today for exporters in llorin, Kwara state. This is a very rare opportunity provided by the Council to further enrich your knowledge on how to access the African market. It is in our belief that the programme like this would go a long way to acquaint the SMEs with covering protocol and their annexes in the phase I and phase ll of the AfCFTA Agreement”.
. TheWitness
