Nigeria has N58tr export gap for leather, others — Report

Nigeria can earn an extra $153.7 billion (N58.58 trillion) from export of leather, rubber, sugar and soya under the federal government’s Zero-oil Initiative.

This was part of a report commissioned by the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC), conducted by Ernst and Young (EY), and presented during a virtual roundtable by Oreoluwa Porter recently.

The Zero Oil Initiative was developed in 2016 by the Nigerian the NEPC and was targeted at boosting exports, diversifying the economy from oil reliance and increasing the foreign reserves position of the country.

The report found that in terms of export market gaps, $50bn (N19.06tr) exists for soya, $80bn (N30.49tr) for rubber, $8.2bn (N3.13tr) for sugar and $15.5bn (N5.91tr) for leather exports.

In terms of the capacity to leverage on the export market gaps to ramp up non-oil earnings, the report found: “Highs levels of informality, limited capacity of MSMEs and supporting trade agencies and the absence of a concerted, adequately structured awareness and information dissemination structure continues to limit the potential of the non-oil sector.”

The report also stated that in spite of some intervention funds targeted at the non-oil sector, these funds have been relatively unutilised as small export businesses cannot access them due to levels of informality, size of business and reported bureaucratic process involved in funds disbursement.

Speaking on the report, a director at NEPC, Dr. Ezra Yakusak, said the export council would continue to incubate and support small enterprises involved in export business.

He said the report was timely and would be a useful resource in finding solutions to the problem of small scale exporters.