The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) in collaboration with Nigerian Aviation Handling Company Plc (NAHCO) and the Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS), weekend, identified some challenges facing export of fresh food and possible solution.
Some of the solutions to address identified challenges are: organisation of farmers into product groups for synergy; ensuring that appropriate logistics services that can move products from the farm gates to the NAQS facility at the NAHCO shed at the Muritala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos will maintain the quality of the products that are provided; ensuring that farmers use appropriate packaging and labeling in compliance to standards of different importing countries; training and capacity building of stakeholders especially the exporters and development and maintenance of adequate statistical data.
Speaking at a stakeholders' forum with the theme: "Addressing the Challenges of Fresh Food Exporters at the Lagos International Airport." Executive Director/CEO, NEPC, Mr. Olusegun Awolowo, said that the collaboration became necessary after a working visit to NAHCO and NAQS to acquaint the council with workings of these organisations with a view to assessing how their operations could help facilitate its efforts at galvanizing Nigerian exporters of ethnic foods towards servicing the growing demands of EU and USA markets for fresh and processed food items from Africa.
Awolowo said that the country is being denied its fair share of the huge market mostly patronised by blacks in Diaspora, of which Nigeria is one out of five, saying, "Whereas other African countries like Ghana, Cameroon and Cote D' Ivoire are faring well in the same market .
This is happening in spite of the fact that Nigeria is not less endowed in fresh and processed food items.
"For Nigeria to be a significant player in the said market that has Nigerians in Diaspora as the major customers, challenges facing Nigeria exporters, among which are quality and handling issues must be sorted," he said.
Also, Regional Business Manager, NAHCO, Mr. Hassan Yahyah, added that 80 percent of its total company revenue is from cargo imports and ancillary services whereas its cargo export services amount to well below 10 percent of the company's total revenue.
According to him, "this current trend is worrisome to us and also to these airlines that cannot optimize their business potentials. A lot of premium has been added to cargo imports because of this import dependency and trend and we now experience airlines inventing several or additional charges to compensate for this import-export business/revenue gap."
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201410271183.html
No comments:
Post a Comment