Buhari leads Nigeria’s business delegation to China next week for export negotiations     

The minister of foreign affairs, Geoffery Onyeama, on today said that Nigeria will utilise President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to China to open up market for Nigerian products in that country.

Onyeama who stated this while speaking with newsmen in Abuja on the president’s visit to China next week said that the visit would be used to promote Nigerian export to the world’s most populous nation and second largest economy.

According to him, China is the second largest economy in the world and has become a major trading partner with Africa and in particular Nigeria.

The visit makes Buhari the first president to be invited by China after the African-China meeting held last year in South Africa.

Onyeama said that going to China was really a win-win for both countries adding that Nigeria will also look at seeking new opportunities or identifying new areas of possible cooperation with China.

He also noted that Nigeria will look into how to key into the $60 billion fund that will be made available to the African continent by China.

Nigeria is also looking at a standardization agreement of what is exported from China into the country to have a common standard for that during the president’s visit and how it can key into that fund for financing ongoing projects, including some of the mono-rail mass transit projects in Lagos, and the Abuja- Kaduna railway project.

 

 “China is where you have 1.3 billion people and we are looking at how to promote our export, and we want to develop our manufacturing sector so we need to start engaging with them and looking at how we can have a trade balance with them. I think we are importing much more from them than what we are exporting to them, and we have to start looking at what we can export to them,” said the minister.

He said that the president would raise the issue of possibility of bringing down the five per cent tariff charged on agricultural products exported to China, and that the country will also see how to increase the quantity of petroleum oil they buy from us.