The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) is set to reposition its operational activities to meet the needs of the exporting community.
The Executive Director/CEO of NEPC, Dr Ezra Yakusak disclosed this at NEPC 2023 work plan review and validation session recently in Abuja Nigeria’s capital.
He said, “This is sequel to the tremendous performance recorded in the non-oil export sector in 2022 in which the sector recorded a significant and highly impressive result of US$ 4.820 billion recorded for the year 2022 representing an increase of 39.91% over 2021.”
Dr Ezra noted that the session was targeted at aligning the Council’s operational activities with that of the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, FMITI.
According to him “In line with the FMITI Ministerial Mandate (2020-2023) and the Medium-Term Development Plan (2020- 2025), two important reference materials that have over the past few years guided the implementations of the Council projects and activities and of which we are expected to align to, to support the diversification agenda of the Federal Government, the need to reposition our operational activities is desirable”.
Mr Yakusak while pointing out that Departments and outstation offices implemented projects at will without recourse to the work plan and allocation of resources noted that the practice has not only made tracking of projects difficult and unaccountable but grossly affected the impact assessment of such projects which do not align with set project implementation frameworks.
“While some of these projects that are expected to a have direct bearing on exporters at the grassroots, are being implemented by Departments at the Headquarters, the Regional and State Coordinating Offices are also implementing different projects outside the approved Work plan thereby making Monitoring and Evaluation of these projects difficult” he added.
Dr Ezra disclosed that the few structural changes in the Council departmental nomenclature and organogram as approved by the NEPC Board were in tune with global best practices and classifications and compliance with some recommendations of the International Trade Centre Benchmarking program for the NEPC.
Emmanuel Ukoh
