PH Mundial – Port Harcourt Online Newspaper News Across The Region
Related Articles
Joel Anaekwe
Experts and stakeholders in the export sector have lamented Nigeria’s continued underutilization of opportunities provided by the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), a United States of America trade Act, meant to diversify and stimulate economies of the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. They say Nigeria is not only killing its export opportunities but also lacks the competitive advantage when compared with most African countries that export goods under the AGOA policy.
The experts noted specifically that the Nigerian government was not doing enough to build export capacities of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the way governments of other Sub-Saharan African countries are doing, adding that the country does not even have a clear-cut programme on AGOA promotion and this was also instrumental to the export decline.
Executive Secretary of the Institute of Export Operations and Management (IEOM) Nigeria, Ofon Udofia, said, “Nigeria has consistently failed to exploit the potentials of AGOA and the inherent gains the policy would have offered the country.”
Speaking to newsmen in Port Harcourt, Udofia stated that Nigeria had sadly failed to tap into AGOA, which was enacted in May 2000 by the 200th American Congress, under President Bill Clinton, for Sub-Saharan African countries to export non-oil products to the US duty free, and thereby enhance their access to the US market. The Act allows SSA countries to export about 7,000 products to the US duty free.
“Regrettably, Nigeria has allowed AGOA gains to go down the drain; while countries like Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, among others, have been reaping hugely from the policy,” Udofia, whose outfit (IEOM) has been helping some exporters in product packaging and standardization for the export market, said.
He added that “IEOM collaborates with the export and import community to ensure that their Nigerian and West African affiliates received the support they need to successfully compete on the international trade stage.”
Last year, the institute collaborated with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria and the International Trade Centre (ITC), a joint agency of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Organization (UN), to organize a train-the-trainers (ToT) workshop, and built the capacities of business associations and agribusinesses in Nigeria.
AGOA, according to Udofia, provides export incentives to participating countries to enable them grow their economies, with different products expressly endorsed as duty free. However, compared to other countries, he noted that Nigeria has benefited little or nothing, due to a surge of impediments (some self-imposed) to achieving the AGOA goal.
He highlighted that there was huge knowledge gap on export trade for Nigeria. “A lot of Nigerians are not yet abreast with the export business itself, not to talk of embracing the African Growth and Opportunities Act”, he stated.
He added “Government needs to do more to sensitize the people, and create a seamless system where the AGOA knowledge base will be broader and accessible,” noting that many Nigeria exporters had not exported on the AGOA platform because they lacked proper information and documentation. Though he acknowledged that some Nigerians have been exporting to the USA and other countries, he said AGOA poses great cost-saving, stress-free opportunities export process. “We’re losing money by not using AGOA, which is duty-free”.
Udofia, who is a certified trainer on trade and market standardization of the United Nations, also identified the Nigerian financial institutions as not being inclined towards financing export-based businesses; but rather support import business, which leads to capital flight. The trend, he noted, needs urgent reversal if Nigeria must harness the full benefits of AGOA.
“Our banks must begin to see a new dynamism in funding export business as key to diversification and stimulation of the nation’s economy. They should help open the vast potentials in export business by opening access to funding to promote AGOA,” the IEOM boss said.
He equally lamented a situation where some Nigerian exporters venture into the foreign markets, without availing themselves of information relating to the destination country’s interests; stressing that it was paramount to take cognizance of standards and regulations in Nigeria because such information were needed to guide critical decisions concerning our export destinations. “We need to align ourselves with global best practices, especially as they relate to other countries’ importation standards, culture, regulation, among others – if not, our export ventures would largely result in monumental loses,” he stressed.
Udofia also noted that the Federal Government needs to improve critical infrastructure to enhance value addition to our exports. There is infrastructural deficit in electric power, roads; even in laboratory tests, to ascertain standardization, so that tour products will not be of lower standards or unnecessarily costly, but would be globally competitive. Agriculture is an area that Nigeria can leverage on, as regards the AGOA policy, but we need to improve on quality so that cases of rejected exports will be minimized.”
