CBN Boss Assesses Benefits Of AfCFTA To Nigerian Businesses

4 years ago
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Nigerian companies  would gain preferential access to African markets worth $504.17 billion in goods when the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is  fully implemented,Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, has said.
Additional $162 billion in services will also come to Nigeria,he said yesterday at the Zenith Bank’s 2021 Export Seminar held virtually in Lagos.
 He emphasized the need for  Nigerian businesses to seize the   AfCFTA opportunity to ensure that Nigeria serves as a significant hub for international and domestic manufacturing companies seeking to serve the West, Central and East African Markets.
 According to him,Nigeria has a very young energetic, technological savvy population that have been leveraging technological applications to improve service delivery in the areas of finance, logistics and agriculture to consumers in Nigeria.
 “I believe the AFCFTA will provide an opportunity for these young talented Nigerians to expand their services across the African region. Developing trade portals that could support instant sales of goods manufactured in Nigeria to consumers in other parts of Africa is one aspect that can help to support the creation of jobs in Nigeria and improve foreign exchange inflows for the country,” he said.
 Nigerian banks,he said, are already playing a significant role in expanding across the African continent.
He disclosed that   the bank has taken considerable steps to improve the productive capacity of businesses, which would enable them take advantage of export opportunities in Africa.
 “Our intervention programs in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, are helping to enable businesses expand their scale of production, which is meeting growing domestic demand for goods, but also providing goods for the export market.”
 He said the apex bank set up a N500 billion non-oil export stimulation facility with the Nigerian Export Import Bank (NEXIM). “This initiative will also help to enable greater exports of processed agriculture commodities into other markets in Africa and in the global market,” he said .
 He said that supporting greater trade within Africa as well as with the global community is indeed vital to the CBN’s objectives of enabling greater economic growth and creating employment opportunities for our growing population in Nigeria.
Trade enables specialization, economies of scale and it also provides significant rewards to those who are innovative, as they can sell their goods and services to an expanded market.
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