Garment manufacturers in Nigeria have been urged to take advantage of the AGOA Visa Stamp in order to export to the United States duty free.
The call was made by the Regional Coordinator (South West), Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Mr. Babatunde Faleke in Abuja last weekend.
Faleke who talked to journalists after a one day sensitisation workshop on the utilisation of the AGOA Visa Stamp for exporters of garments and apparel to the US market however called on garment manufacturers in Nigeria to take advantage of the AGOA Visa Stamp.
“AGOA Vista Stamp is very important because it allows you to export duty free to America because duty on apparel to America ranges from 8% to 32%,” he said.
Stating further, he said, “If you export duty free, it gives you comparative advantage over those who are not qualified to export under AGOA. It open doors for you, it makes you tap into the large international market.”
He also gave the prerequisite for manufacturers to obtain the Visa Stamp. “You must be a player there, and again you must have certificate of origin, you must be AGOA compliance, your documentation must be right. Documentation is what is important, then let the Nigerian Customs stamp your product as AGOA compliance,” he informed.
He however expressed concern over second hand clothes market competing with the local manufacturers but proffered the way out of the menace.
“The way out is that we have to improve on quality because people say that those secondhand garments are more qualitative so every player in the industry need to be conscious of quality.
“Everybody wants things to wear, they want something that is durable and cheap so also we need to do the right thing; make the price competitive, let the quality be good and honestly, we would get there. Again government is not encouraging second hand clothing but people are still smuggling it in.
On the challenges plaguing the garment industry, Faleke said chief among them is that the industry has no hub and the capacity to produce in large scale is limited.
“The challenges are that we don’t have hub. The capacity to produce en-masse is lacking in the country. If we have a 100,000 shirt order now, how many people can meet it within the specified time? Efficiency is low, skill gap is there, energy cost of production is low, a lot of challenges are there,” he lamented.
Main facilitator at the event, Mr. Emmauel Odonkor also told journalists that there are factories in Nigeria that have the potentials to produce for the US market.
“The USA established AGOA and there are garment manufacturers that can meet up. There are three factories than I can say have the potentials with the right technical support to produce for the USA market,” Odonkor said.
He added that, “As we speak, we have some Asians on ground providing technical support, helping to transform from tailoring procedure to mass production,” he said.
