As a follow up to President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Lagos State Saturday, the Federal Government on Sunday attributed trade politics among nations as one of the major reasons some of the country’s exports were facing rejections in some destination nations.
This was disclosed by Adeyemi Dipeolu, special adviser to the President on Economic Matters, Office of the Vice President, at an interactive session with the press in Lagos.
Due to international politics, most destination countries opposed the country’s exports because Nigeria had taken a stand on imports from such countries, Dipeolu said.
In today’s politics, it would be difficult for the present administration to harm its local industries for the benefit of a foreign nation, the presidential aide said.
It could be recalled that in recent times some major Nigerian export commodities, such as yam, beans, and dry catfish, had faced rejections in the various destination nations, with the destination nations saying the produce might not had met their import standards. A case at hand is Nigerian cocoa exports being rejected in some Asian countries leading to the exporters losing million of dollar.
And in some cases, there prices are reviewed downward, and all these go a long way to discourage farmers and produce exporters, and in some cases creating artificial unemployment.
The presidential aide said the present administration would not allow the importation of certain goods in which Nigeria had a comparative advantage, saying some of these countries reject as retaliation, because the Nigerian government refused to allow the country to become a dumping ground.
“For instance, yams said to be grown in a neighbouring country are accepted by most advanced and developing countries, whereas the yams are grown in Nigeria. The exporters buy the yams in Nigeria and export it from their own country.
“It is all trade politics that will eventually balance out. So, it is better to be self-sufficient in food production than to rely on the importation of such food items,” he said.
According to Dipeolu, it is not advisable for Nigeria to deplete its foreign reserves for food importation as this can make the people to spill over the borders in search of food.
To him, the Federal Government had not signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement in order to save Nigeria from being a dumping ground for foreign goods.
He said the country needed to carry out due diligence on such agreement to ensure that the agreement would not negatively affect the local industries.
On the issue of power, he said the country’s power generation had reached 8,100mw, saying the government was working on the transmission lines to end epileptic power supply in some parts of the country.
“The way to go is that the government is working on gas and other environmental friendly means to provide adequate power to the people,” he said.
The country’s economy was more than N100 trillion, he said, saying further that the government alone could not finance the economy, whose growth rate was on the rise, and urged private sector to come to the aid of the government to provide an enabling environment for the economy to bloom.
