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To boost direct trade between beleaguered oil producing nations, Nigeria and Russia, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), in collaboration with Trail Trans Logistics Group of Russia, will today, launch RuNiTrade, an e-commerce platform that converges Nigerian and Russian corporates for trade purposes.
Lower oil prices have strained the fiscal positions of fuel exporters and weighed adversely on their economic growth prospects.
Global nineteenth and third producers, Nigeria and Russia, saw their GDP growth rate contract by an estimated 0.4 and 1.5 percent respectively, in the first three months of 2016, as oil revenues, which account for over 70 percent of total exports of both countries, bottom out.
Plagued by shrinking economic growth and foreign exchange shortages, policy makers in both countries are increasingly seeking economic diversification away from oil to non-oil exports.
Experts see Runitrade as a potential forex earner for both countries, cushioning sliding export receipts to some extent, and tip it to strengthen the non-oil sector.
“The RuNiTrade e-commerce platform is a welcome development, coming at a time when Nigeria seriously needs forex from export as a way of diversifying the economy, and strengthening the non-oil sector,” said Muda Yusuf, Director General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) in a note to BusinessDay.
“The focus here, with this launch, is to strengthen the bilateral trade relations between Russia and Nigeria, and boost the economic activities between the two countries.”
The trade value between Nigeria and Russia sits above$300 million (N59.7 billion), available data shows.
A paltry amount compared to the trade value between Nigeria and countries like India, the United States or China.
RuNiTrade’s official launch scheduled to hold today will converge Russian and Nigerian businessmen to explore business opportunities.
Before now, stakeholders rued the failure of both countries to grow their trade activities by eliminating bottlenecks militating against smooth trade relationship.
Trail Trans Logistics Company Director, Sampson Uwem-Edimo, in a note to BusinessDay said, “The Company is positioned to make bilateral trade relations between Russia and Nigeria a smooth one.
And to achieve this, we will continuously transmit news about Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, to Russia. The move is a bold and aggressive attempt at stimulating investment flows between both nations.”
Trail Trans Logistics, a Russian based group of companies and operators of the RuNiTrade e-commerce platform, noted that its partnership with LCCI is to add value to Nigeria’s international trade relations status and unravel the hidden treasures in doing business with Russia, as a big window to Europe.
The total value of Nigeria’s merchandise trade at the end of first quarter (Q1) of 2016 stood at ₦2,723.9 billion. From the preceding quarter value of ₦3,517.4 billion, this was ₦793.5billion (22.6% less). This development arose due to a sharp decline in both imports and exports, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reveal.
Exports saw a decline of ₦671.1 billion (34.6%), while imports declined by ₦122.4 billion (7.8%). The steep decline in exports brought the country’s trade balance down to ₦548.7bilIion less than in the preceding quarter.
The crude oil component of total trade decreased by ₦716.7 billion (46.6%) against the level recorded in Q4, 2015
LOLADE AKINMURELE
