By Chioma Obinagwam
One of Nigeria’s leading financial institutions, Fidelity Bank, has outlined solutions to boost earnings from non-oil exports in the country.
Confiance News gathered from the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Fidelity Bank, Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe at the weekend.
Moreover, financial media website, Investopedia, defines exports as goods and services that are produced in one country and sold to buyers in another. “Exports, along with imports, make up international trade,” it explained.
Speaking at the 2022 Annual Conference of the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN), the CEO said that one of the ways to increase earnings from exports is by encouraging local businesses to expand and export beyond the shores of the country.
Onyeali-Ikpe, who was represented by the Divisional Head, Export and Agriculture, Fidelity Bank Plc, Isaiah Ndukwe, said, “Never has the need for expansion of Nigeria’s non-oil exports been more critical given current economic situations. These headwinds has again reinforced the need for local businesses to diversify their markets to hedge against consequent shifts in macro-economic indices including but not limited to inflationary and exchange rate movements.”
“For businesses with foreign exchange exposures, availability and accessibility of foreign exchange present an existential threat to the enterprise so ability to pivot the business to exports to create an alternative source of foreign exchange supply will re-shape going concern and market leadership positions moving forward,” she expatiated.
The CEO who spoke on the theme: “Boosting Domestic Capacity for Sustainable Export Earnings” also highlighted the need for value addition to the country’s export commodities.
She noted that adding value to exports would move Nigeria’s revenue three times in the northward direction.
“Using Cocoa and Cashew as examples, a step forward in the value chain e.g. (a) moving from cocoa beans to cocoa butter or powder and (b) moving from raw cashew nuts to kernels, moves foreign exchange revenues by at least 3x.
“At 3x increase in revenue, Nigeria can move cocoa exports to US$3 Billion per annum (currently about $1 Billion) and cashew to US$600 Million (currently about US$200 Million) in the short term to medium term,” Onyeali-Ikpe disclosed.
“If we then doubled the capacity of our plantations,” she continued, “as well as processing capacity, we can exponentially move the numbers.”
She further stressed the need for short, medium and long-term interventions in the fiscal, monetary and infrastructure spheres.
Confiance News recalls that the latest figures released by Nigeria’s bureau of statistics better known as National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reflects a need for dire improvement in the non-oil exports.
The report, Confiance News gathered, revealed that although the country’s exports increased by 47.5 percent in the second quarter of 2022 (Q2:2022) compared to the corresponding period of 2021, the non-oil exports ranked low whereas crude oil exports still ranked highest at 79.77 percent of the total exports.
© Confiance News
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