Nigeria signifies willingness to rejoin Africa trade insurance

Nigeria has issued reassurance notice of the country’s willingness to rejoin Africa trade insurance to attract benefits’ embedded in the trade protection agency.

Consideration to this effect was recently given by the Federal Executive Council, FEC, at its meeting in Abuja, Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun revealed recently.

She said, ‘“FEC approved for Nigeria to rejoin the African Trade Insurance Agency. This is an agency that is out to provide risk guarantee for private investors coming into Nigeria, as well as exporters from Nigeria. “It will provide risk guarantees. So, instead of projects asking for sovereign guarantees, we will be able to provide that risk mitigation through the African Trade Insurance Agency. Many other countries are already members so Nigeria will be also joining.”

Adeosun said, “This agency has an A rating international;’ and is able to guarantee long- term projects. So, what we see as a result of this is that there will be increased level of investments, particularly PPP, where every often, the investors want some guarantee from the government, instead the government issuing sovereign guarantee directly.

According to the minister, recent NBS’ announcement of Nigeria’s exit from recession indicated that the country is moving in the right direction, though more still need to be accomplished.

She said, “There is still a great need to do so. I have some progress report on the work we have done with payroll where we are still seeing contraction. Every time we put agencies into our automated payroll system, we see contraction; and we intend to continue with that.

The minister said that rejoining Africa Trade Insurance tallies with the positive future outlook, which shows opportunities more advancement and therefore need to tap into the opportunities the agency provides,
She said, “So, in summary the outlook is positive. We did some comparative analysis in June 2014 with oil price of $109 Federation Allocations was N844 billion; and in June 2017, it was down to N318bn, just to give you an idea of how much income the country has really lost in the last few years.

“We are adjusting very strongly; and we believe if we continue with this trajectory, not only will we stay permanently out of recession, but more importantly, we will have a positive and growing economy what works for all Nigerians, which is our aim.”

Stories by Bonny Amadi