While over the years the Nigerian economy has focused on crude oil export as a major source of revenue, recent moves to reduce dependency on a volatile market and shift to increase non-oil revenue through non-oil exports may only be a dream and not a reality on the back of the challenges of over documentation, overlap of agency functions and unrealistic regulations.
According to data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), crude oil contributed 82 percent to total export in Q1 2019 against 13 percent of non-oil export in Q1 2019. This evidently portrays how far the African most populous country is to delivering herself from the fears of negative oil price shocks hence getting her gross dollar reserve depleted and pressuring downwards the value of Naira.
At a recently concluded summit at the chamber’s 2019 export group’s symposium tagged “Synergy between Regulations and Trade in Nigeria: Driving Exports,” export experts and stakeholders raised concerns over the effect of over documentation activities and unrealistic regulations on the success of export businesses in Nigeria.
Over the years, exporters in non-oil commodities have had to deal with rejection of goods or having to pay for the destruction of their goods in other countries exported to, despite having gone through several documentation processes here in Nigeria hence increasing incurred expenses, shortage in revenue and loss.
According to stakeholders in this space, while we could attribute the rejection to exporters ignorance in the business, too many certificates and standard regulations expected to be met by exporters in Nigeria are somewhat confusing with several agencies performing overlap functions hence necessitating exporters boycott even the most important processes.
“People want to avoid NAFDAC if it were possible saying that the agency is slow, tedious and very discouraging for any exporter,” Olumuyiwa Aiyegbusi, CEO of Olu Olu foods, “Our institutions are still weak and only strong institutions make a business environment working.”
According to the export policy guidelines and regulation of NAFDAC as published on its site, it will require at least 28 working days to begin and end export process if one has a registered product.
“One of the requirements for export certificate is that you have to produce your invoice and packing list, having obtained it my truck will have to wait for 28 days losing about N25,000 per day while I wait,” Kolawole Awe, Chairman NACCIMA export group stated how cumbersome this is, “in 28 days my truck would have made 8 trips.”
This translate into loss for exporter in the bid to get an export certificate.
“The problem with Nigeria is that we are over documented and over regulated, we have to remove all these bottlenecks,” Aiyegbusi said.
Amongst issue raised is the need for exporters to understand what documentation the importer requires.
Stakeholders there advocated for a “one stop shop” where all necessary documentation and certification can be done in a single building as this will eradicate time wastage and reduce processing cost.
DAVID IBIDAPO
