The immediate past Director-General, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Dr Muda Yusuf, has urged the Federal Government to create an enabling environment to drive export business.
Yusuf gave the advice at the monthly forum of the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN) on Thursday in Lagos.
According to him, Nigerian economy has the capacity to attract a lot of foreign exchange because of its size, potential and hidden opportunities.
The theme of the forum was, “Post COVID-19: Economy in First Half 2021 and Outlook for Financial Services Sector.”
“Foreign exchange earning is all about creating the environment for more inflows to come in the form of Diaspora remittances, foreign direct investment inflows, foreign portfolio investment, export proceeds among other,” Yusuf said.
He expressed concerns on what exporters go through at the ports to do business in the country.
“We say we do not have foreign exchange, but the way to attract foreign exchange is to export. However, exporting is almost a nightmare in Nigeria.
” For instance, the process for export cannot begin until an exporter pays the truck owner and loads the truck.
“After paying the truck owner, the product will go through about two weeks of inspection and documentation.
“After that, he will also face the traffic gridlock and before they could finish the inspection and documentation, some of the products must have gone bad especially the ones that are perishable,” he said.
He faulted the gap between the official and unofficial exchange rate windows adding that the policy of exchanging export proceeds at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange rate was not fair to the exporters.
According to Yusuf, this is one reason some exporters hide their proceeds.
He said: “Exporters should have free access to their export proceeds and be incentivised, just like the Nigerians in the Diaspora are encouraged with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s naira for dollar exchange rate policy for remittances. nan.
