The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) wants to double Nigeria’s non-oil export in 2025. This may mean that the nation could move from $5.5bn in 2024 to $10bn.
To achieve this, the south-south zone of NEPC led by an architect, Benedict Itegbe, wants each state in the region to double its export value, with Rivers State a major target.
In doing so, the NEPC set up a one-day training and sensitization for cooperative societies in Rivers State.
At the event, a seasoned expert, Elizabeth Chidi-Wike, from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, helped to coach the cooperatives on how best to achieve the objective.
She gave the preliminaries and definitions before showing how to set up an export market for co-operatives, saying the following should be carried out including situation analysis.
In it, she urged them to evaluate the co-operative’s current capacity, products/services, and readiness for export. She also urged them to identify new and existing export markets, competitors, market trends and potential buyers, as well as understanding export regulations, tariffs, and standards.
Read also: Exporters in Rivers and Bayelsa zone are hampered by poor packaging – NEPC new zonal coordinator
She lectured on export strategy development where she explained this to mean a process of creating a comprehensive plan to guide an organisation’s export activity to achieve its goals and objectives.
She gave the ways to achieve this such as conducting an evaluation of the society’s internal capabilities and readiness to export, quality of products and types of products.
They are to identify export opportunities through research to spot potential export markets and opportunities.
They are to develop an export business plan by creating a comprehensive export business plan that outlines export objectives, market analysis, product adaptation, pricing strategy, distribution and logistics, marketing and promotion, regulatory compliance, and risk management.
They are to assemble a team with the necessary skills and expertise to implement the export strategy as well as to regularly monitor and evaluate progress against export objectives, and make adjustments to the export strategy as needed.
Another strategy is to provide training and support to co-operative members to improve product quality, packaging, and branding to meet international standards. They could organise trade missions, exhibitions, and product showcases to promote cooperative members’ products in target export markets.
They could identify potential partners to mitigate risks and support cooperative members’ export activities.
She showed them how to build capacity through training and education, infrastructure development, coaching and mentoring, and upgrade facilities, equipment, and technology to meet export standards. All of this is to build cooperative members’ capacity and create quality assurance.
They can consider study tours and exposure visits; development of training materials; establishment of cooperative training institutions.
A major point she stressed is market entry and promotion through market research and exhibitions; digital marketing, networking and partnerships, product development and enhancement. She also mentioned logistics and operations such as export documentation and compliance, shipping and logistics, payment and financing, and export capacity building. She also lectured them on monitoring and evaluation needs and methods.
She showed the critical relevance of export to any nation especially Nigeria especially in foreign exchange earnings and trade balance.
In her presentation, Evelyn Kobo, an Assistant Director, showed basics in understanding the importance of market-driven export development. She spoke of introducing strategies for doubling export volume and value, showing how NEPC has been working to strengthen cooperatives and clusters for enhanced export competitiveness. She shared key activities and insights from 2024 to guide 2025 initiatives, and reviewed 2024 activities such as symposium on certification, cooperative strengthening, and export growth. All this led to her treatise on ‘Operation double your export activities’.
In an interview, Itegbe, the regional coordinator, Itegbe, who is a deputy director, said the workshop was an agenda-setting one for 2025 for non-oil export sector in Rivers State, with the theme: ‘Export Development for Cooperatives and Cluster: Operation Double Your Export 2025.’
He said: “We had an array of stakeholders from private and public sectors.”
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