Posted by By Daniel Gumm on
SPECIAL Adviser to the President on Export Programmes and CEO, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Mrs. Modupe Sasore has assured exporters that non-oil exports is a priority area for government policy, appealing to the exporters to take up the challenge of exporting into the US market which had huge potential by quickly graduating from "awareness to action."
SPECIAL Adviser to the President on Export Programmes and CEO, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Mrs. Modupe Sasore has assured exporters that non-oil exports is a priority area for government policy, appealing to the exporters to take up the challenge of exporting into the US market which had huge potential by quickly graduating from "awareness to action."
Mrs. Sasore spoke last Thursday at a seminar cum workshop on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) which held at the Airport Hotel, Ikeja.
The event was organised by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and the Federal Ministry of Commerce in collaboration with the AGOA Resource Centre at the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce and West Africa Trade Hub (WATH) which is a USAID project dedicated to the promotion of exports from the West African sub-region to the US.
The workshop was part of series of events being organised in Kano, Lagos and Aba to create greater awareness about AGOA and encourage the Nigerian non-oil exporters to take advantage of AGOA which was introduced in 2000 and recently extended till 2015.
AGOA gives duty free access to goods exported from eligible sub-Saharan African countries into the US market. While there are over 6,000 products that could be exported under the arrangement to the US, the four key sectors identified by the Federal Government are textiles and apparel, leather and leader products, agro-allied products and handicrafts. Nigeria is already exporting these products to Europe, ECOWAS and the far East markets. Notably, Nigeria became eligible AGOA country recently and obtained duty free access for its African prints and wax prints and other ethnic and hand-loomed ‘folkloric textiles' duty free into the US.
Some of the experts who addressed the exporters included Mrs. Emily Miller, Business Development specialist and Mr. Abou Fall, AGOA Support Services Coordinator of WATH.
The workshop was well attended with participation from executives and entrepreneurs from the target sectors, MAN, Export Promotion Group, NACCIMA, the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce, Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and government parastals, including CBN and SON.