The Federal Government on Wednesday approved a new National Quality Policy aimed at enhancing the quality of products exported from Nigeria.
The essence of the policy is to ensure that goods exported out of Nigeria are accepted in the countries they are being exported to, Niyi Adebayo, minister of industry trade and investment, told State House journalists after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“For a long time, Nigerian exporters have been suffering because of the lack of quality of their goods. We felt that it was high time we actually had a policy which would create a situation whereby standards of the Nigerian goods that are exported would be raised such that rejection would stop,” he said.
The move is coming on the backdrop of the recent take-off of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.
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Nigeria’s efforts at exporting yams under former Minister of Agriculture Audu Ogbe suffered major setbacks as they were rejected for lack of proper handling.
The new policy is expected to create a situation for strong collaboration between the government and the private sector and set up quality testing centres and testing laboratories.
The laboratories are also expected to have accreditation with international centres, such that any good that has been approved to have met the standard would be of international standard.
Adebayo said that FEC also ratified the Nigerian/Hungarian Trade Agreement.
The whole essence, according to him, is for Nigerian businessmen to have access to exporting their goods to Hungary and to further increase trade between the two countries.
The Federal Government also approved the N50 million variation of power contract for the Kano Free Trade Zone under the Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority, as part of plans to strengthen export trade.
Adebayo explained that the contract was awarded in 2018 for underground cabling for power project within the Kano Free Trade Zone but was not completed before certain specification changes were made.
“So the contractor requested a variation of 6 percent increase of the initial contract sum, which amounted to about N50 million. Council has approved that variation and the job which has reached 93 percent completion will be completed within the next six months,” he said.
Adebayo said the council also approved another contract for Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority for the purchase of a property in Lagos to be used as its Lagos zonal office.
“As you are aware, Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority is responsible for all the free trade zones in the country, the value of the free trade zones in the Lagos area alone is valued at about $30 billion. So for proper collation and oversight of these free trade zones, we felt that it is only right that we have the zonal office of the Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority in the Lagos area and that has been approved by council,” he said.
