The Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce and Industry
(NBCC) is planning to take 30 food processors, fashion designers and
other businesspeople to the United Kingdom to explore various markets in
the country.
The chamber has also signed a five year memorandum of
understanding (MoU) to wholly manage Nigeria’s non-oil exports moving
to the UK.
Adeyemi Adefulu, president and chairman of the council,
said the chamber also intends to take Nigerian exporters of various
segments abroad every
year, stressing that NBCC is on the verge of
establishing an export desk which will be a one-stop agency to Nigerian
exporters and chambers of commerce whose members are interested in
exporting to the UK .
‘’We would also have the necessary structure in Britain
which can manage Nigerian products in the UK in a way they have not been
managed before,’’ he said during the launch of Ondo Kingdom Chamber of
Commerce held in the state.
According to him, while the NBCC has the total effect of
taking Nigerian exporters to the UK market has been tangential. He said
Nigerian yams, plantains, bananas, pineapple, smoked fish are not found
on the high street shops of London even though Ghanaian products are
very much available, adding that this provides opportunities to Nigerian
businesspeople.
‘’There are no less than three million Nigerians living in
the UK. It is a country which should be a major target of our non oil
export. Yet it was not happening,’’ he stated, adding that NBCC has to
improve its operational capacity because it observed that the trade
between Nigeria and Britain was not at the level in which it should be.
He said the formation of Ondo Kingdom Chamber of Commerce
at this time is considered late as the inability to organise and
sharpen its voice and being aggressive through advocacy and lobby and
pressure group as seen cocoa and timber decimated, with an attendant
removal of a solid base of wealth creation.
“These are resources on which several industries would
have been founded. Today, properly managed, Ondo should be exporting
cocoa butter, cocoa creams, chocolates and other cocoa based products
from cottage industries,” he said.
“ It should also be exporting chipboards, veneers,
plywood, not to talk of excellent wood- based furniture to many parts of
the world. My conclusion is that by standing by and leaving everything
to government, the Ondo business class has been complicit in the
destruction of these sustainable wealth generating resources and with it
thousands of jobs and opportunities,’’ he added.
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