As part of Nigeria’s efforts at increasing the volume and value of non-oil exports, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council, NEPC, has launched a Trade House in Cairo, Egypt while targeting to launch such in seven other countries.
The Trade House in Egypt is a central location where Made-in-Nigeria products can be shipped, displayed and distributed to different parts of the world.
Executive Director/CEO of NEPC, Dr. Ezra Yakusak who spoke in Lagos at the advocacy programme on the Export Trade House Cairo, said the council would establish the Trade House in Nairobi, Kenya; Johannesburg, South Africa, Hunan in China; Ottawa in Canada; Dubai in UAE, Saudi Arabia and Lome, Togo.
He said the export trade house was expected to improve value addition in export products through cleaning, processing, distribution and marketing.
On efforts being made to remove Nigeria from the EU-restricted list, the executive director said a committee has been set up by the Minister of Industries, Trade and Investment to work on this and the committee has six weeks.
He also noted that the NEPC had taken “a proactive measure to ensure that some of these products are removed from the EU restricted list because we realized that the restriction was placed based on poor packaging and lack of mandatory and voluntary certification.
“So we decided to take the bull by the horn and invited some certification bodies and we paid for it. So far, we facilitated the certification of 150 SMEs free of charge.”
A facilitator from Egypt, Mr Ghazwan Mousallati of AgriVerdi Company highlighted the challenges faced by exporters to include lack of transparency, market and reach between local suppliers and end users.
He tasked Nigerian exporters to take advantage of the huge market in Egypt to export their products cutting across all sectors.
