The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) has announced plans to raise a new set of exporters to boost Nigeria’s non-oil sector.
The Director of the Trade Information Department, NEPC, Dr Joe Itah, speaking on the sidelines of a two-day Export Mentorship Programme (EMP) preparatory training in Lagos, said the programme is aimed at identifying a crop of reliable new exporters, particularly from the small and medium scale enterprises who he said the council hopes to grow into formidable exporters of products and services.
According to him, the move would also help these new exporters prepare for the risk involved in the export market terrain in its bid to simplify their routes to export business.
“So we were able to select this number. We are training in what we call the zero to export which is a programme that is designed with seven modules starting from the introduction of exports to beginners, documentation through packaging and labelling, through certification and also financing and use of international commercial terminologies for exports and logistics.
“So at the end of this training of the 70 participants, we hope to bring out what we call semi-champions, those that will undergo our export mentorship programme. We floated this programme for a year and started with 20 SMEs with 15 graduating that we sent to the fields to work with established exporters,” he said.
Also speaking, a participant at the event, Tai Oyekan, said the programme would help exporters to re-strategise while also keying into the federal government’s policies.
He said the programme is key because export itself is dynamic, adding that the programme would keep exporters abreast of global development in the export market.
“We need this kind of programme to be organised often. I want to use this medium to appeal to NEPC to train more capacity builders because we have more exporters than capacity builders. Nigeria is a vast nation and would require trainers all over the country to reach out to exporters in different parts of the country. Nigeria is blessed and there is no local government area where you cannot get something to export out of this great country,” he added.
