Rand Merchant Bank Pledges to Partner Nigeria on Trade Facilitation

Rand Merchant Bank has promised that it would continue to partner and support Nigeria’s government towards ensuring that the country becomes a hub for trade in the continent.

The Co-Head, Banking Rand Merchant Bank Nigeria, Taiwo Shote, said this as part of his contribution on a recent panel with the theme, “Implementing a 21st century trade economy: The challenge of transforming Nigeria into Africa’s business hub.”The panel was part of the GTR Trade conference, one of the world’s leading trade finance events.

“As a bank, we intend to find ways to continuously partner and support the government in Nigeria becoming a hub for African trade,” Shote explained.

Trade facilitation has been highlighted as a key objective in the country’s mission to boost economic growth.

To support this, Nigeria’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment had announced a group of policies aimed at promoting the nation as an African trade and investment hub, ranging from the enhancement of logistics corridors for perishable goods to the simplification, modernisation and harmonisation of trade documents and procedures.

This is in addition to the support the Central Bank of Nigeria is providing through its various policies and incentives to drive non-oil exports in Nigeria with the intervention funds and recently the RT200 program which the CBN is aiming to drive exports to $200 billion in the next three to five years.

“We have embraced the policies that have been implemented to drive economic development and have the expertise and resources to support the government from a private sector perspective,” he added.

The Export Expansion Facility Program (EEFP) is one of the initiatives borne out of the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on export businesses. The Nigerian Export Promotion Council also created a fund with BOI acting as custodian of the Export Development Fund of N50 billion, a part of the federal government’s N2.3 trillion Economic Sustainability Plan. To date, over 1000 exporters had benefited from the program through fund assistance and capacity training,” Shote added.

“Trade and Export can only be successful with the supporting infrastructure. The National Quality Infrastructure Project (NQIP) was initiated to support the development of missing standards and quality control bodies in Nigeria in order to improve the competitiveness of Nigerian goods and services,” he said.

Agencies such as NEXIM Bank are working on initiatives to unlock opportunities and attract investments in the non-oil sectors and also towards Nigeria’s effective participation and competitiveness under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).”

Lastly, the government has initiated the digitiation of the trade process and other aspects of the import/ export processes. Some other examples are the automation of Form A on the Trade Monitoring System and the Price Verification System (PVS).

“Rand Merchant Bank Nigeria will continue to work in partnership with the public and private sectors to continue to grow the Nigerian economy in a sustainable and responsible manner and we will continue to provide solutionist thinking to improve trade flows within Nigeria and Africa as a continent underpinned by our local and global insight,” he said.