The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved a National Quality Policy for Nigeria.
Minister of Industry Trade and Investment, Niyi Adebayo, disclosed this to Journalists at the end of Wednesday’s cabinet meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said the essence of the policy is to ensure goods exported out of Nigeria are accepted in the countries they are being exported to.
According to him: “For a long time, Nigerian exporters have been suffering because of lack of quality of their goods. We felt that it was high time we actually have a policy that will create a situation whereby the standard of the Nigerian goods that are exported would be raised, such that that rejection would stop.
“This policy will create a situation whereby the government and the private sector will be able to collaborate to set up quality testing centres, testing labs which we hope will have accreditation with international centres, such that any good that has approved to have met the standard, would be of international standard.”
Nigerian/Hungarian Trade
Adebayo said the council also approved the Nigerian/Hungarian Trade Agreement.
“The whole essence is for Nigerian businessmen to have access to exporting their goods to Hungary and to further increase trade between the two countries,” he said.
READ ALSO: Nigerian government to implement N50m export expansion programme
The Minister said the council also approved a N50 million variation of power contract in the Kano Free Trade Zone.
The memo was on behalf of the Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority.
Adebayo explained that the contract was awarded in 2018 for underground cabling for power project within the Kano Free Trade Zone but unfortunately it was not completed before certain specification changes were made.
He said: “So the contractor requested a variation of six percent increase of the initial contract sum, which amounted to about N50 million. Council has approved that variation and the job which has reached 93 percent completion will be completed within the next six months.”
Adebayo said, the council also approved another contract for Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority, for the purchase of a property in Lagos to be used as their Lagos zonal office.
“As you are aware, Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority is responsible for all the free trade zones in the country, the value of the free trade zones in the Lagos area alone is valued at about $30 billion.
“So, for proper collation and oversight of these free trade zones, we felt that it is only right that we have the zonal office of the Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority in the Lagos area and that has been approved by the council,” he said.
Nnenna.O
