By Yemi Olakitan
On Tuesday, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) reported that Nigeria exported over 4.146 million metric tonnes of non-oil products during the period from January to June 2022, with a total value of $2.593 billion.
This was stated by Dr Ezra Yakusak, Executive Director of NEPC, while he was presenting the first half-year 2022 progress report to journalists in Abuja.
According to Yakusak, this figure represents a 62.37 percent increase over $1.59 billion for the first half of 2021 and $981.442 million in 2020, respectively.
He stated that “despite the global economic recession that impacted the majority of businesses in 2021, the sector recorded a significant growth in non-oil exports.”
He was referring to the growth in exports of goods other than oil. These numbers came from the reports that different pre-shipment inspection agents sent about how well non-oil exports did.
The Federal Government hires these people to figure out the amount, value, and destination of Nigeria’s non-oil exports. These figures were culled from those reports. During the time period being looked at, Yakusak said that more than 200 different kinds of goods, including manufactured goods, semi-processed goods, solid minerals, and raw agricultural products, were exported. These products ranged from manufactured goods to raw agricultural products.
He said that, unlike in the past, Nigeria was gradually moving away from its traditional exports of agricultural goods and toward exports of semi-processed or manufactured goods. He said this was in contrast to what had been the case in the past.
An investigation of the reports submitted by these pre-shipment inspection agents found that the performance of exports from January to June 2022 was the best half-year performance for non-oil exports since 2018.
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This is clear from how the products are categorized in the PIAs report: manufactured products:
“36.28 percent, raw agricultural products 33.35 percent, precious stones 13.22 percent, and others 17.15 percent,” he said. “All other percentages are insignificant.”
According to the head of NEPC, urea and fertilizer accounted for 32.49 percent of total exports in the first half of 2022, ranking them among the top 15 exported products.
Along the same lines, cocoa beans, sesame seeds, and aluminum ingots each contributed 5.07, 7.0, and 7% of the total value, respectively.
During the time period being looked at, 572 different companies were involved in exporting the goods. “This shows that Nigerian businesses are slowly getting on board with the NEPC’s campaign to diversify by starting to export,” he said. “This shows that Nigerian businesses are slowly getting on board with the NEPC’s diversification campaign.”
Yakusak said that different Nigerian goods were sent to a total of 112 countries during the time period in question. He made this statement while explaining that there were no instances of export rejections.
According to him, some of these products were shipped to locations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Oceania regions.
According to these figures, Brazil, the United States of America (USA), and India were the top three export destinations based on the value of imports.
“It is very unfortunate, but none of the top 10 export destinations for Nigerian goods is a country on the African continent.”
He stated that only Benin and the Niger Republic had made it into the top 15 countries.
