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Nigeria ready for AGOA — NEPC

The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) on Tuesday said that most Nigerian exporters were fully ready to export to the United States through the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA).

Mr. Babatunde Faleke, Lagos Zonal Coordinator, NEPC, made this known while speaking at the Pre-Exhibition Selection Exercise for Non-Oil Exporters, organized by the council in Lagos.

He said that the exercise was aimed at re-screening exporters of exportable items under the AGOA programme, for the upcoming trade shows in the US.

“The truth is, most of our exporters are ready for exports under the AGOA programme, with all that we have and the market is there waiting for us.

“Most of them have been involved in exporting, but some areas like documentation need to be better settled.

“Here, we have exporters of food items, commodities, finished and unfinished industrial materials like raffia, charcoal whose products are compliant with all the requirements to export to the US.

“The US market is very large, but under the AGOA, we export duty-free, so it’s worth our stress and that’s what we keep doing here to ensure we record successes,” he said.

Faleke also said that there were up to 250 products exportable under AGOA, most of which Nigeria had the highest global production capacity in.

He said that the council had been appealing to the government to revive the Export Expansion Grant (EEG), in order to get more manufacturers into the export net and generate revenue for the country.

He said that in spite of the readiness of non-oil exporters to export more non-oil export products formally, they are unable to meet up with the demands of the buyers, hence the need for grants.

Faleke also said that the council would soon kick-off the Nigerian Diaspora Export Programme (NDEX), which was a major project aimed to establish a ‘Nigerian city’ in most countries of the world.

The AGOA programme is a United States Trade Act, enacted on May 18, 2000, as Public Law 106 of the 200th Congress. AGOA has since been renewed to 2025.

The legislation significantly enhances market access to the US for qualifying Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

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