Nigeria’s agric export up 130% in Q1 2017

The latest foreign trade report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has shown the country’s agric export increased by 130 percent from N13 billion in Q1 2016 to N30 billion in Q1 2017as Nigeria explores opportunities to earn substantial dollars through the non-oil export.
The value of agricultural export increased by N17 billion on a year on year basis while on a quarter on quarter basis it increased by N16.5 billion showing a 82 percent increase.
Stakeholders attributed it to the increase in the export of agro commodities in the first quarter of the year.
According to the report, sesame seeds, soybeans, frozen shrimps, cashew and crude palm kernel top the agricultural products exported during the period.
Sesame seeds led the agro export with a total of N13 billion worth exported to Turkey, China, India, Japan and Vietnam.
Stakeholders in the sesame subsector say the export numbers are an indication that sesame seed production in the country has the capacity to grow and earn the huge foreign exchange and create hundreds of jobs as long as the government draws a master plan for the sub-sector, as it has done with rice.

“Sesame has a lot of potentials. It has both commercial and medicinal value and oil extracted from the seeds is better than every other seed oil,” Mutairu Mamudu, national president, Sesame Farmers Association of Nigeria told BusinessDay in a telephone response to questions.
“It is 100 percent free of cholesterol and that is why the demand for it is very huge both locally and internationally,” said Mamudu.
He noted that the country is still not exploiting the full potentials of sesame, urging the government to encourage more investments in the value chain of the crop.
Soybeans came second on the agro export list with N5 billion worth of export in the first quarter in 2017, followed by frozen shrimps with N3.4 billion, cashew nuts N2.4 billion and crude palm kernel with N1.3 billion as the top five agro export for the period, the report states.
Nigeria mainly exported agro commodities to Netherland, Vietnam, Turkey, China, India, Russia, Japan and Greece.
Over the same period the country exported N200 billion worth of agricultural commodities.
Nigeria imported durum wheat worth N26.8 billion from United States, N14.4 billion from Russia and N11.9 billion from Australia. Nigeria also imported Maize worth N8.3 billion from United States and N1.1 billion from Cyprus.

 

Josephine Okojie