The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), Barr. Hassan Bello has said that the Council has been doing a lot to sensitize and create enlightenment programmes to educate shippers on the best practices to conduct their exports so as to avoid their products being rejected by some agents to the ports of destination.
Bello who made this known while delivering a lecture titled: The Role of Ports Economic Regulator in Promoting Export Trade in Nigeria, at the Global Searchlight Magazine’s First Year Anniversary Lecture/Honours held in Lagos last weekend noted that that was important as Nigeria can only create wealth when goods were exported out of her shores.
Represented by the Director Special Duties/ Public Relations of the Council, Bello stated that if as a country, Nigeria depends on what it imports and don’t make effort to balance it by exporting, it would have a negative impact on the country.
“We always talk about the issue of containers that come into the country fully loaded and by the time they are going, you find these containers going out of the country empty. That means, we have a lot of things to do and all we need to do is to encourage the export of these commodities and that will create wealth for the country, increase value of the products, access to big and more profitable market and earn foreign exchange because that is the ultimate thing, how to earn foreign exchange. Of course, our Naira will be more strengthened and we can now balance our trade as we dwell more on export than depending more on import”, he said.
He disclosed that the Council was shifting attention on non-oil export as Nigeria had for long depended on whatever it made of her oil, exporting crude and then importing the refined product which according to him was annoying and cannot pass as balance of trade.
In his word, “Then you have other non-oil exportable products in Nigeria, we have the cocoa, the Sesame seed, the soya beans, cashew nuts, palm kernel and all that but we need to be very careful. It is not always easy to say I want to go on export because there are thing you must not delve into when you want to export because you want to earn foreign exchange. There are trades that are prohibited and there are these conditions that you must meet if you need to go on export and I am sure there is website from customs which one need to go through before embarking on export but just for whatever, somebody decides to export maize out of the country or you want to export raw timber, you will always see them along the road where container is falling, by the time you look at them, you see logs of wood.
“These things will go out there; they get refined and find their way back into Nigeria. I am not sure if these things are allowed but export prohibition list, I am sure by the time you get to the customs website, you will see a long list of items that are prohibited so that you don’t just because you want to go into export, you don’t make effort at finding what and what is required of you otherwise, you get caught by the law”.
While listing the challenges to export to include poor access roads to the ports, accessibility to the market, poor packaging and documentation, he added,”we look at what Shippers’ Council will do to solve all these challenges we have enumerated because it is enormous and unless we are able to address these challenges, we will still be where we are”.
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