Earnings from non-oil export are expected to jump from $2.7 billion to $25 billion by 2025, the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) has predicted.
It said this would be achieved through its new strategy tagged: ‘Zero Oil Plan’.
Its Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Olusegun Awolowo, described the plan as a strategy to mobilise private and public resources to replace oil as the country’s major source of foreign exchange (forex).
He said this became inevitable in the face of the fall in global oil prices, adding that the era of Nigeria depending on oil as its primary source of forex was gone.
According to him, the country’s continued reliance on oil would only decrease its economic fortunes, stressing that it was high time the nation embarked on non-oil exports.
He said the Council had taken a proactive step at increasing Nigeria’s forex earnings through non-oil exports by developing the zero oil plan.
He said: “The Zero Oil Plan is a coherent agenda to mobilise public and private resources towards replacing oil as our number one source of forex.
“Under the plan, Nigeria will position itself to gain at least a five per cent share of a total value of world exports in strategic sectors over the next 10 years, to ensure sufficient scale of production and prevent sudden market distortions.
“At the end of ten years, it is hoped that our non-oil export revenue would increase from $2.7billion in 2014 to $25billion in 2025.”
He further said the Council, in collaboration with an indigenous export consulting firm, is undertaking a practical and detail training series that would build a crop of knowledgeable exporters to raise the contribution of the non-oil export sector to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.
According to him, the training tagged: ‘The making of new exporters’, aims at training would-be exporters through the entire process of export business from conception to execution and after care services by experts from the sector who will play the role of mentors.
“The programme, which was slated to run for nine months, was targeted at creating market opportunities for Nigerian exporters as well as providing a veritable platform for training new crops of exporters that would help enhance the quality of Nigeria’s exportable goods,” Awolowo added. The Nation
