The Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce has said that the lack of proper infrastructure has caused Nigeria to miss out on the opportunities of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, one year after its implementation.
The chamber stated this during its breakfast meeting titled “One year of AfCFTA: Opportunities, challenges and the Nigerian-American partnership” which held in Lagos on Tuesday.
Speaking in her opening remarks, the President of the chamber, Adebola Williams, represented by the Deputy President, Mr Thomas Osobu, said the failure to take advantage of the AfCFTA once again underscored Nigeria’s inability to explore its non-oil potential.
She said, “As we all know, with Nigeria’s vast non-oil export potential, we have, quite unfortunately failed to optimise the opportunities available to us. We have largely underperformed in taking advantage of the African Growth Opportunities Act. Thereby, one year after the full take off of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, there is a clear need for some sort of review.
“It is in this consideration that the chamber has facilitated this forum as a key fulfilment of chamber members expectations. In doing this, we will continue to broker healthy interactive fora between our members and all relevant facilitating agencies (both governmental and private sector bodies) that are capable of providing useful information that may help our members who are already into exports (whether to destinations inside or outside the African continent) as well as those who are desirous of starting off on an informed note.”
The keynote speaker/Chief Executive Officer, Pan African Payment Settlement System, African Export-Import Bank, Mike Ogbalu, spoke on the need to adopt a unified payment system for the specific purpose of intra-African trade.
This, he said, would greatly help member countries tap into the full potentials of the AfCFTA.
Also speaking, a former Director-General of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture, Mr John Isemede, blamed the lack of adequate infrastructure and government ineptitude for Nigeria’s delay in benefitting from AfCFTA.
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