Exporters to get N375m grant soon – Yakusak

The Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Dr Ezra Yakusak, has said exporters should expect an additional N375 million under the Export Expansion Grant (EEG) programme of the federal government.

Yakusak said the Federal Executive Council (FEC) recently approved the amount as part of effort to promote non-oil exports.

He stated this over the weekend in Abuja at a sensitisation walk tagged: “Export for Survival”.

He said, “At the just concluded nonoil export conference, we were able to identify major challenges in the non-oil export sector which include packaging, logistics constraints and market access.

“We understand the peculiarities of these challenges, which is why we have maintained that the communique from the conference will be implemented fully, as we already have a Domestic Export Warehouse (DEW) to ensure that our products don’t stay too long before being shipped out of the country.

“And to complement our efforts, the FEC approved N375m which will be disbursed to the 285 exporters who are beneficiaries of the scheme.”

He further said the sensitisation, which is the second in its series this year, was beginning to yield results owing to the influx of exporters at the agency’s office to register and get more information on export processes.