The Group Managing Director of Zenith Bank, Mr. Ebenezer Onyeagwu, has called for a concerted effort towards diversifying the country’s export base through the promotion of non-oil exports.
He made the call during a Webinar organised by the bank, themed ‘Prospects of Non-Oil Export During and Post-COVID-19’.
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Onyeagwu said boosting the non-oil export is imperative in view of the opportunities that exist in the broader contexts of ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which seeks to create a continent-wide market of 1.2 billion people with combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $2.5 trillion and about $4tn in consumer and business spending.
Onyeagwu also urged players in the non-oil export value-chain including exporters and financial institutions to play their part in the drive towards expanding the nation’s non-oil export base.
The Director of Trade & Exchange at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr. Ozoemena Nnaji, in a keynote address, said the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is a wake-up call for the country, as it has again exposed the over-dependence of the Nigerian economy on one product.
She called for a deeper policy look at the non-oil sector to find ways of genuinely improving the quality and quantity of Nigeria’s non-oil export goods.
The Chief Executive/Executive Director of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Mr. Olusegun Awolowo, noted that the crash in oil prices following the COVID-19 pandemic and OPEC’s price war with Russia reinforced that the mono-product economy of the country is not sustainable, calling for a buy-in into the Zero oil policy of NEPC.
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