Mr Samuel Afolabi, Lagos Regional Coordinator, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), says the council is committed to raising its transparency and efficiency rating to 100 per cent.
Afolabi stated this during a stakeholders meeting on Feedback for the Review of NEPC’s Operationalization Plan in Lagos on Friday.
He said that NEPC was gathering feedbacks from importers and exporters on how the council could further improve on services rendered.
He noted that NEPC was a member of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) setup in 2017 by Executive order 001.
“As a council, we are to obtain information on what we need to do more in order to serve our exporters better.
“The objectives of the council are to improve service delivery and to ensure that as much as possible, transparency is built into the system.
“In the rating of PEBEC, we were scored 92 per cent in terms of transparency and 74 per cent in terms of efficiency.
“The essence of this meeting is to enable us obtain feedbacks as to what we need to do to ensure that this rating is improved to 100 per cent both in areas of transparency and efficiency.
“That is why we are here so that we can hear from exporters and be able to do more and improve.
“It is our tradition that we interact with stakeholders or individuals on whatever we are offering as services for our importers and prospective exporters.
“This is the first means by which we can measure our progress, we can introduce new products and services required,” he said.
The regional coordinator added that the council had redesigned its website to enable exporters and importers register online from anywhere in the country.
He said that since the council setup, it had done a lot things in terms of providing effective services to exporters.
“Currently our website have been redesigned to guide the exporters and complete registration online from your office and you only need to come to the nearest office to pick up your certificate.
“Most of our people are Small Medium Enterprises ( SMEs) and they need to be supported so they can stand on their own, both financially and in terms of advisory services.
“The current situation in Nigeria has necessitated the need to ensure that, despite the situation in the country and the world.
“We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on logistics to ensure that despite the lockdown, exporters have access to necessary information that will help as we are not locked down.
“Therefore, the MoU on logistics will ensure that whenever you have an order to fulfill, the logistics required to do those products will be available for the exporters,” he added.
Afolabi urged exporters and farmers to familiarise themselves with exporting plans in order to develop a better business product plan that would be accepted for international markets.
He said with a good exporting plan, exporters would not have any issue regarding exporting to any country in the world.
He said exporting was the latest business idea and most sought after venture now in the country.
Dr Femi Oke, Chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Lagos State Chapter, commended NEPC for organising the meeting with farmers, processors and exporters to further strengthen service delivery.
He urged Federal Government to strengthen activities of the council in order to provide more services that would be beneficial to Nigerian farmers, producers and processors.
Oke said that the NEPC was the only non oil sector council available at the federal level working with farmers.
“We work together with the council because we cannot just be planting or growing crops without adding value. We export some of our products through NEPC.
“People like myself are able to benefit from the African Growth Opportunity Act and they have been doing a lot and that is why we want government to strengthen NEPC to improve services to farmers.
“We all cannot produce and sell locally, we can seek the avenue where we can sell our products and am sure that is one of the reasons we are here today to sensitise our people to add value to whatever they are doing,” he said.
