For a stronger economy and effective trade relations, Pan African Capital plc has called for the removal of most hindrances militating against export and trade financing in Nigeria.
The investment banking firm also advised the Federal Government to create necessary favourable climate that will encourage in-flow of foreign direct investments into the country.
Chris Oshiafi, group managing director, who stated this in Lagos during the just concluded sixth Annual West Africa Trade and Export Finance Conference, noted efforts by the government to ensure a robust economy but said much still needed to be done in the provision of necessary infrastructure that will galvanise businesses.
He listed such constraints to export and trade financing to include unfavourable government policies both in export and import, asking government to create policies that will help exporters and trade, and bemoaned the adverse effects of the devaluation of the local currency against international currencies, like the US dollar, describing this as a major issue.
“We have an issue with the devaluation of the naira but that is not peculiar to Nigeria alone, oil is an international commodity. Quite a number of the oil producing countries are seeing a lot of challenges in revenues. Why Nigeria’s case is worrisome is that we have depleting reserves and the current political terrain has not helped in creating that confident to enable our Naira to appreciate. We, however, believe that after the election, we hope to see an improvement and that will also help trade moving forward,” he said.
Other militating factors, according to him, include unimpressive flow of direct foreign investment, poor power supply and more importantly the current security challenge in the country.
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“Security is an issue that will help people have faith in coming into Nigeria and dealing with Nigerian businessmen but these challenges are everywhere and we believe conferences like this will help bring exporters and importers together and will help develop trade going forward,” he said.
On Pan African Capital’s involvement in the conference, he said the company has a unit that deals with structured finance and export credit and also has a number of clients who deals with exports, local productions and also in global trade. The essence, according to him, is to bring the company’s services to Nigerian companies who are interested in that kind of service.
“It’s to showcase the export credit products that are available from the stable of Pan African Capital to members of the exports public and also to meet with banks that also finance a number of these activities so they understand our involvement and then we will be able to work together as partners to develop global trade.
“We have a couple of partners who are exports credit agencies; we also have a number of development partners both across Africa and some other multinational organisations. In the last couple of years we have done close to $400million in terms of exports trade, in terms of import on behalf of our clients. So, we provide advisory agencies for most of the companies within these sectors which will require them to always ensure the growth of their businesses,” he said.
