Nigeria and the rest of the African countries should be seriously considering expanding their value added export facility in order to substantially increase their global earning abilities.
Professor Ken Ife, Chief Economist Strategist of ECOWAS Commission has proposed for the provision of concessionary and long term funding for business people who are interested in expanding existing plants or building brand new ones for the sole purpose of adding significant value to non-oil commodities before exporting same.
He made this proposition at a Zoom meeting with the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria, FICAN, in Lagos, at the association’s capacity building program themed: “Economic Recovery and CBN’s RT200 FX Programme: Role of Banks and Export Promoting Institutions on Friday, February 18, 2022.
According to him, Nigeria, Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire together produce about 72% of the global cocoa exports earnings which is about $132billion, but only get a meagre 5% with Cote D’Ivoire earning about $3.6billion, Ghana $1.9billion and Nigeria $804million.
“Nigeria today produces about 770,000 metric tonnes of sesame, cashew and cocoa of which about 12,000 metric tonnes are consumed locally and 758,000 metric tonnes are exported,” Professor Ife said, adding that only about 16.8% of the 758,000 metric tonnes are exported annually in processed form.”
He advised that the establishment of non-oil commodities expansion facility will not only increase local production for exports but will also serve as industrial raw materials for export processing, stressing that Nigeria could harness its comparative advantage through the creation of geographical prioritization of crops across the country’s production efficiencies.
He said Nigeria can overcome its acute foreign exchange shortage and reverse its fortunes by introducing non-oil forex rebate schemes that will act as a special local currency rebate scheme for non-oil exporters of semi-finished and finished products who show verifiable evidence of exports proceeds . , repatriation, adding that it would be sold directly into the I and F window to boost liquidity in the market, similar to the naira4dollar Diaspora Remittance Scheme.