The Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) has expressed it worry over the domination of raw commodities in the country's non-oil exports with just few products with value addition.

The Executive Director of NEPC, David Adulugba, made the remarks over the weekend in Abuja at an interactive session with the media.

He said that there is the need to step-up the value chain, diversify from commodities and empower the SMEs through entrepreneurship development as they constitute the bulk of the actors in non-oil export sector.

Represented by the Director of Trade Information, Mr. Aliyu Lawal, the executive director said that the country should in future focus on agro-allied industries and improvement of packing, packaging and labelling standards.

He mentioned a handful of challenges inhibiting optimal performance of the non-oil export sector which include inadequate funding, restricted access to credit facilities, infrastructure deficiency, weak logistics to support supply chain and unrecorded export trade among others.

He said that council has embarked on proactive activities to move the sector forward which include the export promotion partnership training series in collaboration with University of Abuja and B & B Consultants to make businessmen export ready.

He said that the council is also operating a human capital development centre in Lagos under Public Private Partnership agreement to build capacity for producing for US market through AGOA agreement.

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