All incentives jointly administered by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and other ministries, departments and agencies (MDA’s) of Government are intended to salvage the economy in diversification, Roselyn Ekanem, trade promotion advisor, Aba smart office of NEPC, has said.
Ekanem, in an address at one-day sensitisation workshop on export financing in Aba, the commercial hub of Abia State, explained that finance is key in export business and its availability helps the exporter to do his/her business with ease, noting that lack of it hampers the success of export activities.
This is as she noted that finance has been a major challenge to most exporters, which has affected a lot of opportunities.
Consequently, the Aba smart office having seen the need to expose the teeming exporting community on the various funds available to the exporter, organised the workshop so that exporters and intended ones will be exposed to various sources of funds for export financing, various NEPC activities and more.
She explained that the NEPC has various programmes which are aimed at developing the sector and improve the economic base of the nation.
Some of these programmes like the One-State-One-Product (OSOP) initiative, Women in Export, Export Development Fund, to mention but a few, have started yielding dividends, as people are now keying into them to develop their export businesses.
The NEPC, in other to encourage exports and diversify the economy, has the mandate to spearhead the creation of export incentives and administer same.
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This they do with the backing of the Export Incentive and Miscellaneous Provision Acts No 18 of 1986 with several amendments, CAP E19 LFN 2004 and ACT 65 of CAP E19 1992 LFN. Several incentives have been created by other government agencies to encourage export.
NEPC provides pre-export incentives and post export incentives.
Export Development Fund, which is a Pre-Export incentive is intended for the development of products, exporters and staff for export activities.
This includes creating awareness at workshops, participation at trade fairs, international training with development partners for staff and exporters, product and market researches.
This fund support SME’s in the areas of pre shipment quarantine issues and standards.
While Export Expansion Grant (EEG), a post export incentive is a grant is indicated for the expansion of export volumes and value. It is designed to improve the competitiveness of Nigerian products and services. It stimulates export growth. Applications to access this grant are made when export proceeds are received by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and process by NEPC.
Eligibility to this fund is registration with NEPC. Manufacturer of Nigerian products or merchants of same, must have exported and proceed repatriated.
This grant issues the Export Credit Certificate, which is used in purchase of government bonds, taxes and settlement of credits by Bank of Industry (BoI), Bank of Agriculture (BoA), among others.
