In recent times, the Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) have stepped up
their efforts to increase the inflow of non-oil export proceeds into the
country through different initiatives which include the RT200 FX programme and
Export For Survival Conference respectively. I will like to therefore commend
the efforts of the NEPC and the CBN for the different policies and initiatives
that your esteemed organisation has put together on behalf of the federal
government to grow the non-oil export volume from Nigeria.
However, having been in this sector
as a practitioner, trainer and consultant for almost two decades, I have
observed that beyond the obvious factors that militate against the growth of
non-oil export, there are other important and critical factors that many are
not aware of. This has to do with the issue of export readiness on the part of
the business that wants to go global with its products. This explains the
reason why thousands of businesses register as exporters and get export
certificate from the Nigerian Export Promotion Council every year but only a
few businesses have been able to export every year and this was just about
1,500 businesses in 2021.
The concept of export readiness has
been grossly neglected in our drive to grow non-oil export as a country and
this has made most of the efforts of the federal government not to yield the
desired results over the years. This was the motivation that made me to embark
on a Ph.D. research at the LIGS university in America titled “Critical
Evaluation of Nigerian Firms' Readiness for African Continental Free
Trade Area”. Through this research I was able to identify signs and
symptoms of lack of export readiness in a business. In addition to this, I was
also able to isolate the readiness criteria for evaluating a business for
successful and sustainable export business.
As a matter of fact, this criteria
was used to design a model that was deployed to evaluate about 120 businesses
across Nigeria and they include large corporates and SMEs. The results showed
that only about 3% of the businesses in the country were export ready while about
66% are almost ready. The almost ready exporters explain the reason why some
businesses start to export but drop out of the business after a few shipments.
The export drop out phenomenon is a very common occurrence among many
businesses in Nigeria and this has kept the number of successful and
sustainable exporters in Nigeria to be under 1,500 companies for many
years.
To achieve the RT200 FX programme of the
CBN in the next 5 years, Nigeria needs to grow the number of exporters from the
current level of about 1,500 companies to about 10,000 and also support them to
grow their export volumes per annum. However, the results of the export
readiness assessment done on Nigerian businesses showed that many of them are
not ready to go global with their products. This goes a long way to show that,
if Nigerian banks are going to be able to achieve the goal of the RT200 FX
programme of the CBN, they would need to incorporate a support service on
export readiness assessment and advisory among other support services that the
export desk needs to render to new businesses that are coming to explore the
opportunities in the export sector.
Finally, it is also important to
state that there is an online export readiness assessment tool that can be used
by businesses to evaluate their readiness for the export market. This is
necessary for them to know the areas of readiness where they have skill gaps
and deficiencies which need to be covered before they embark upon. This service
is free and the readiness assessment report will be delivered to them in 24
hours. The export readiness assessment tool can be assessed via this link
(Click Here)
For the love of Nigeria, Africa and Mankind
Bamidele Ayemibo (bayemibo@3timpex.com)
Lead Consultant, 3T Impex Trade Academy
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