Concerns as Non-Oil Export Revenue Drops by N52bn

The Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Mr. Olusegun Awolowo has  said that earnings from non-oil exports dropped by N52.2billion ($261million) during the second quarter of the year.
According to him, non-oil export went down to N78.2bn ($391m) in the second quarter of 2015 from N130.4bn ($652m) that was recorded in the second quarter of 2014.
Speaking during a courtesy call by the new Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), he said this was because of the slump in non-oil export revenue earning to the suspension of the Export Expansion Grant (EEG) and insurgency in the North East.
According to him, “The situation is compounded with the non-payment of the Export Expansion Grant (EEG) and the insurgency in the North East which is the agricultural basket of the nation.
“The nation is not only losing on the economic front, the lull in the non-oil export is also affecting the capacity of the manufacturing sector to employ, lamenting that in the period under review, the nation lost 50 per cent of its labour force.
“The country has taken a dip of 60 per cent in oil revenue. For any country across the world, it is huge. However, the challenges we are having in the oil sector are also affecting the value of our non-oil export. One of the challenges is the continued rejection of products by foreign importers, which he noted was due to improper documentation by clearing and forwarding agents”.
He said some of the products were rejected because some of the exporters do not obey the rules in documentation.
He however disclosed that inter-agency committer is currently working to address such rejection in future.
“In a bid to unearth the reasons behind the rejection of our export products in Europe, we went to London with seven agencies of government. We visited the largest Port where Nigeria and other West African countries’ goods pass through. To our utter disgust and amazement, many of the rejects were based on improper documentation. They route some of the goods through fraudulent clearing and forwarding agents. We have to work with the Customs service to address this. When we have an export portal, people can track their exports”, he said.
The Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hameed Ali had during the visit promised that his organization would ensure that impediments to export trade were removed.