Nigeria's Federal Government yesterday expressed worries over the low volume of trade in non-oil products between Nigeria and the United States of America.

Minister of Commerce and Industry, Chief Achike Udenwa, said this at a sensitisation workshop on "opportunities and challenges available in doing business in USA," in Lagos.

Udenwa, represented by Deputy Director, Trade, in his Ministry, Mr. David Adejuwon, said the fact that Nigeria had not leveraged on trade opportunity in the 6,400 products made available by the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) trade incentive scheme, is an indication of the inefficiency of trade between the two countries.

"It is very unfortunate that some countries with less potentials are benefiting immensely from the AGOA initiative packaged for sub-Saharan African countries, while Nigeria is lagging behind," he said.

Udenwa said, "the volume of Nigeria's non-oil export to US has increased from $32.5 million in 2007 to $38.2 million in 2008, depicting an increase of 17.6 per cent," noting that even though there was an increase in the volume from 2007 to 2008, the $38.2 million non-oil trade figure for a vast nation like Nigeria left a lot more to be desired.

"There is need to work harder to increase the volume of our non-oil export, so as to actualise the present administration's vision of placing Nigeria among the top 20 leading economies by the year 2020.

"My ministry strongly believes that educating Nigerian exporters on how to access the US market will ensure achievement of the above objectives and enable the ministry to achieve its three point agenda of increasing production, non-oil export and reduce importation," Udenwa said.

Latest AGOA Trade Data currently available on AGOA.info


Click here to view a sector profile of Nigeria's bilateral trade with the United States, disaggregated by total exports and imports, AGOA exports and GSP exports.

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