NEXIM Bank Pledges to Enhance Nigeria’s Non-oil Revenue

The Managing Director of the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM Bank), Mr. Abba Bello, has said the bank is currently undergoing transformation to enable it achieve its mandate of helping to boost non-oil trade and increase revenue from the sector.

Bello, disclosed this in an interview with THISDAY, on the sidelines of the 2019 Investiture of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), where he was awarded the institute’s Honorary Fellow alongside 13 others.

The award was in recognition of the recipients’ immense contributions towards the development of the banking industry and the Nigerian economy at large.

Bello said: “We have been on a journey of transformation at NEXIM, to properly focus the bank towards achieving its mandate, which is to diversify the economy in terms of earning foreign currency and promoting trade of non-oil products.

“That is what our mandate is and that is what we have been doing. The bank has been docile at some point and it was not contributing much to trading.

“But the major thing we should start looking at is, how much has non-oil trade grown in Nigeria because outside its mandate or its objectives as a development finance institution to finance nonoil trade, it is also the trade policy bank which does not necessarily mean that we lend money to facilitate trade. There are lots of other facilitation activities we do that helps to boost non-oil trade within the country.

“So what we have been doing is the complete transformation of the bank. It is a journey, it’s not a one-day thing, it’s a journey in which we are at it and it’s a continuous improvement to