The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment is set to spend N1 billion on roadshows, rebranding, furniture and investment promotion, findings by Daily Trust have shown.
The ministry in its 2024 budget breakdown says it will spend N500 million on rebranding and investment promotion. Another N500 million will be spent on the purchase of furniture fittings.
Out of the N14.1 billion budgeted for the year 2024, recurrent expenditure will gulp N6 billion while capital expenditure will take a total of N8 billion.
Personnel cost will take N5.12 billion while overhead will take N905 million, just as capital expenditure is set to gulp N8.13 billion.
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A further look at the budget shows that the ministry intends to spend N582 million on the rehabilitation and repair of office buildings and another N500 million for the creation of new offices and partitioning at the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment headquarters building.
Similarly, another N500 million is to be expended on the implementation of trade facilitation under the one-stop export window programme as well as N300 million for the digitisation and onboarding of the retail export platform.
However, what is more curious about the budget of the ministry is the fact that it budgeted N1 billion for the survey, feasibility and development of a pipeline of investable assets for foreign and local investments and another N1 billion for the establishment of a Trade Intelligence Unit.
Recall that the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Doris Uzoka-Anite while appearing before a senate committee admitted that the Ministry of Industry and Trade does not have data on Nigeria’s trade balance with other countries, adding that she will set up a trade intelligence unit to address the challenge.
“Sir, I regret to say that we seem to have no record of our balance of trade or at least it doesn’t exist in the ministry and that is why we initiated a new unit called Trade Intelligence Unit to ensure that such data is generated and stored.” the minister had told the upper chamber of the National Assembly.
Balance of Trade (BOT), also known as trade balance is the total sum of a nation’s exports minus the value of its imports. Its value is expressed in currency form. A country is said to have a trade imbalance or deficit if its imports are greater than its exports.
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