As the federal government intensifies efforts to rescue the economy from the concerns of the coronavirus pandemic, Olusegun Awolowo,the Executive Secretary of Nigeria Export Promotion Council,NEPC said manufacturers and real sector operatives could look up to the commission’s zero oil plan’ of the commission geared towards diversifying the economy.
Awolowo while speaking on the efforts of the commission to set the economy back on track amid the coronavirus pandemix said the council’s efforts through its numerous non oil export programmes for exporters and manufactures are being intensified to ensure jobs are protected and wealth created.
Awolowo explained that the NIPC’s zero oil plan,ZON is part of the strategic initiative to boost supply of foreign exhange from non-oil sectors by driving growth in five key areas.
The plan he explained is focused on generating $30billion from 11 strategic products,review Trade agreement to priortise Nigerian exports to 22 newly tagged export destinations,strenghtening of export development fund scheme in order to enhance competitiveness of locally produced goods.
He noted that part of the plans concentrates on domestic sourcing of products through the National Export aggregator and exploring the comparative and competitive advantages of states through the one state one product initiative.
In driving this initiative Awolowo explained that lots of capacity building have been done by the council in collaboration with the global technical parkers to ensure competitiveness of export products.
He said,” For instance,we had the certification of 12 SMEs under the Centre for Promotion of imports from developing countries,For technical support for promotion of Nigeria’s export products.
This initiative is a collaborative effort to bring about economic empowerment of NIGERIANS with the aim of enabling SMEsexports to the EuropeanU nion market.
Key selected sectors for promotion are sesame seed,cocoa, and cashew nut as pilot products.The programme trained 60 NEPC staff comprising 30 Coaches/30 officials and 24 MSME companies drawn from the Sesame seed,cocoa and cashew sub sectors.
The emphasis is on training farmers,processors and exporters as a whole in the entire products value-chain with a view to improve productivity,including establishing a sustainable local processing capacity,for the purposes of exports.
