Strategizing to Optimize Trading with AfCFTA What SMEs Must Know

commonwealth business council international trade center ilep ecowas nepal business group and the commonwealth sectarian femi has established the nigerian trade and investment center canada inc sami is the chairman of newgate medical services limited new guest hospital nigeria he also runs his private consultancy firm quinonia global services inc with offices in canada and nigeria as feminist proposed solution to market assets challenges for nigerian exporters seeking to enter the north american canadian market he has recently established the nigerian trade and investment center canada he has also packaged and runs the export readiness program for nigeria msmes in partnership with the abuja chamber of commerce and industry femi boyed as a certified international trade professional crtp the highest professional ranking in international trade in north america thank you everyone please join me to welcome femi you're welcome sir thank you so much lady kay um thank you everyone i am not sure how many of you if you did please signify by raising up your hand i'm sure a lot of you must have seen me blushing i actually turned red and blue and well that's so much about one person and i think uh much more about god so on his behalf i welcome you all to today's meeting and on your behalf i welcome i don't know whether to say chief mr doctor professor um everything that you can add to pre precede his name he deserves he has earned them all uh mr olufami away me who will be the one addressing us today so by way of um opening remarks uh for those who have been with us the last two editions you probably are now familiar with the objective of talking trade for those who are joining us for the first time today talking trade um is premised on the fact that trade is uh i think about the second um recorded human activity and if you go back into the books you would understand the encounter between the serpent and the first creatures adam and eve it was a trade was i have this i offer you this if you take it i'll take that and blah blah blah so that's how far i translate to but significantly things are happening they were happening before the first time i had the word globalization was in 1985. that's about 40 36 years ago by then it had come from theory into the world whether we believe in globalization or not something started again in 2019 um that actually took that year as its name kovid 19 has now made the world so global that you just cannot continue on your own there's no period any longer we are all exchanging goods services and networks on this basis therefore um we thought that trade is a two-edged uh it's a two-pronged sword so to say you are either exporting or you are importing so you could be one of both or both at the same time depending on what end of the stick you are holding and for the world especially smes from developing economies to maximize their participation in international trade we thought that we should introduce a platform where on issues that challenge the smooth running of trade can be discussed where on opportunities inherent in trade can be discussed whereas the strategies to appropriate profitably these opportunities can be discussed so in a nutshell that's what talking trade uh is about so it's sometimes we talking policy sometimes we're talking logistics sometimes we're talking practical experiences and it is instructive that about 80 percent of the active members on the tech talking trade platform are actually practitioners and um as we grow you also notice that our membership has now begun to cut across nations across continents that's the whole idea it is an interchange of expertise of experience and of solutions that will package together and get there so all about that's all about uh talking trade i'll just um spend the next um two minutes i don't know how i'm going to be able to uh introduce this man in uh even 20 minutes but i'm going to do that mr olufami away me and for those of you in the west african uh or even on the african uh continent you would be very familiar with a company called prussia mg process as far as i know is nigeria's foremost financial information hub and they have also different channels with which they make this hope to be relevant to everybody and to contribute to the economy so mr away is a graduate of accounting and a fellow of the institute of chartered accountants of nigeria he's a graduate of [Music] he's a member of the institute of directors and the institute of management consultant he's an associate member of this institute of management and holds a honorary fellowship of the association of investment advisors and portfolio managers institute of credit administration business process management institute and the institute of information management i just mentioned a few i can go on and on but um i'm sure mr oem will permit me to also let you guys know that he's the class captain of the current class of the nigeria institute of policy and strategic uh studies guru because those who come from nigeria will understand that that is the highest uh policy institute in the land so that's the person that we're honored to be having today um we have posted his uh bio earlier on you actually need to read through it we can't read and give him the colleagues as much as he deserves so um without wasting time any longer i'm bringing on for your listening prayer pleasure and um for your valuable take away the thoughts and experiences of mr olufami await me please i'm sure uh we are in very uh good hands um lady kay our uncles um dr taiwo um they will be prompting you from time to time to probably ask questions or make contributions but uh over the next 20 25 minutes or thereabout we are all here as we welcome you sir mr olufemi away me thank you thank you mr femi thank you kenya mushan and thank you the management team of um talking trade now since we've used 15 minutes of the time i will try to accelerate what i want to do my intention is to take us like 15 minutes and give what i call my considered thoughts in terms of background um hope that this will be as much interactive as possible i can let me interject sir you actually have 30 minutes well i don't need that too much i really don't i don't i think i'll spend more time with a q a so that it cannot work there are so many issues we can deal with but thank you very much for attaching this maybe i'll take 20. but i think we should just go through those issues because there are quite a number of things that we may want to get through by the way by way of disclosure my research topic at the institute of uh policy strategy study is actually the african free trade agreement with specific emphasis in looking at sectors um their research findings are just coming in and we haven't concluded it um basically something i take very seriously and i can take honestly some of the data um are quite surprising to me and um even though i'm more comfortable with the chatham house rules i want to respect that the things i may say are quite saying will be one out of decorum not that of um infinity as it may be so thank you gentlemen let me just quickly start with the introduction that in my field i found out that intelligence is always what the market is thinking tomorrow imagine not find out what it sought but in terms of governance government always asks for memory and the conversations are after has always been around memory it's more like when you talk about companies trying to do a change of program everybody in the company changes accept the board and yet they are the ones that make decisions and that's exactly what you find here in nigeria and i will try to quickly show you some of these things in a few um in a few minutes now first is let me just present my general thoughts also share some of how it affects the sms which will be the later part of it um because the concept of sms itself will change as we go ahead in understanding what the after is all about share some of my insights on my research findings and respond to comments as best as i can so the first way is this there's something about a conceptual understanding of actor that i still find very challenging and it's always about modeling the question is this are we running a commercial type model as an sadc model and one of the two things is this one are you running off regional blocks that you have right now or is it just a 54 african country model because each of them has its own challenges if you take a look at the evolution of europe and everywhere where you have trade agreements you don't have the currency agreement a common trade agreement a free trade agreement but we seem to have a potpourri it's called uh i think they call it a salad bowl approach whereby nothing really may happen it is this conceptual there is a conceptual problem around after entry facilitation that i believe is going to be the major challenge and i'll try to point it out in one or two ways the sense for most of us is that this can work two ways one it can be a martial-type plan whereby we make quantum leaps and changes in policies regulations and practices in nigeria or we should just leave it more like a member driven arrangement which is going to be more of the same and this is not realistic approach to advancing continental integration and my sense at this moment is that it is more or less like a member-driven arrangement and it's about moving through the motion with exception of one or two things some countries in africa seem to have broken the code they have understood that we can use this trade to make better bargains for ourselves like ghana did with the european union or like rwanda is doing in terms of positioning his company in anticipation of competition by changing rules and regulations that allows the country to be very competitive this is almost more like common sense really not actual intelligence sometimes we make this thing sound like somebody has the best intelligence but it's just common sense we know how the international trade works but every time we talk about after we are describing something that is not the same as what we used to do but it's something that is yet to happen and which means there are so many changes that would have to be made to understand fully well how do we address the input output matrix one of the most powerful things i have seen is that economic diplomacy becomes a new political edge in the africa that we look at whether after takes effect as it is conceived or not each country must begin to understand that the game is that most countries are beginning to harmonize their political and economic objectives as one single one they are not no longer mutually exclusive and therein lies the power of trade and understanding that an economy that wants to grow must focus on his own sms in such a way that he recalibrates them understanding of course that certain areas may be challenged but in terms of his risk profile you understand that they'll be challenged over some time but in certain areas he would have a competitive advantage and so it's not going to be like after we solve everybody's problem but it would allow us to understand how we can compete now if you take a look at the main problems around in the african trade really it's basically around legola regulatory cost so you talk about the trade barriers and you talk about the non-trade barriers and these are the issues around after at the end of the day after just comes back to taxes and paris and how do we address these issues around these barriers and the new ones we are creating around it but for those of us from nigeria yes here's a good here's the good and sad news we have 58 years to plan for this nigeria was the first person to suggest a single african trade and we went through it in fact the first other one it was what you call what most people refer to as a lagos plan of action was adopted in 1980 we went on all the way to 2019 when we finally signed and the reason we signed was because we were truly not ready because anybody who have read through the rules of origin as contained in the face one of the agreements would understand that nigeria is not ready and for two reasons nigeria at this point did not even have any trade or investment over acting strategy in place for us to operate with in fact i i post it to say that nigeria does not have a trade policy and industry that articulates exactly what nigeria's key goals and objectives that allows any embassy across africa and in europe to understand that this is nigeria's best interest and it is the absence of that philosophical position that should govern our development that makes it very difficult for us to keep on moving and as you can see if the goal around uh after by 2031 is to have zero duty on ninety percent of tariff lines for countries and equals uh acquires customs union um ghana just signed an agreement with eu on the 8020. well let's just hope and see how it works but i will try and explain some of these things in simple terms for you so we all know what this after is the common thing they always talk about is the single market and that's a very interesting one africa as it will have the largest in the world if it's able to get it right but like you can see here i am not so sure whether individual countries can be stopped from taking any action that protects their own interests but does not sign up into that deal and i'm it is on that basis that i worry that this thing is fine on paper but i'm not so sure that we can actually implement it but for countries who understand their strategic interests they will go through it so i've always said the pain is inevitable but suffering is optional so which type of suffering are we ready uh to avoid how to take so i've looked at i'm trying to adjust most too fast some of these things let me focus on these three issues in my own experience and my own work i've looked at these three major areas i've faced i categorized them in my own way as the first one this with the old economy that is trade as you know it's where people like femi have built a whole stock of knowledge and base in there the most critical things are in there for me are the rules of origin and procedures are on the settlement of this food if you look at what happened with a chain with a closure of buddha in kutuna and what have you is that those kampala agreements that were in place were never even followed through so he made it easy for people to just ship vehicles into kotonu and he finds his way through niger at the detriment of nigeria and it is because we are not able to enforce those those are the issues we are trying to resolve and i can report honestly now that i just seem to have addressed that up to about 97 percent so maybe nigeria would have been free from phase one but you see phase two and phase three is what you call the new economy and this is where the game changing for the nigerian economy really lies it is where most or some of us are spending most of our time rather than on the phase one phase one is the old order phase two and three we defined a new order for wearing we see that nigeria also has competitive advantages especially intellectual property rights and e-commerce unfortunately our definition of intellectual property rights in nigeria is still so far behind on occasion and those legal instruments that we need to put in place we haven't started a conversation my friend shuaibu yaori who is in charge of trademarks has been working hard on this thing but there seemed not to be coherence in government's plan to make so if you have an sm who is in charge of products requiring ip rights in order to be able to trade these are new areas or challenges we will have to deal with and so by way of summarizing my opening thoughts around this subject matter is to say that every time you look at these two uh look at this particular graph with you and i keep on using it to explain the changing dynamics those were the companies in 1980 to 2010 that we felt we were writing agreements for most of those agreements we wrote may not be relevant for the companies you see here indeed i dare say that it's even changed if you take a look at it let me go back again if you look at between these two decades here or three decades there 1980 to 2010 look at the companies we are talking about elegance there are peugeot and so most of those agreements were written around those markets those economies those ways of conducting business if you take a look at the dominant companies in nigeria today and you look at them the agreements we have in place would have to be we have to rethink them in order to be able to allow these entities to thrive because these entities reflect the future and if you break it further down between 2010 and 2019 i can even break it further you begin to see that some of these companies are different the companies that would dominate really will not have the same agreements and our concept of trade as we understood it here and it will be different entirely so again for the purposes of the conversation we're having it is always important to to have the dichotomy between the old economy and the new economy but the dominant companies you have here as such that the agreements we have in place would have to change so many believe that nigeria's dependence on oil has relative to its potentials in human capacity has been some of an issue my own sense is this that in this session um i like and that's why i was telling my idea who's kept me that it would be nice if i give my general touch and i can then go to specifics which is also part of my slide presentation is that we would have to address something so let me start with a few things there is a survey that came out i think it's 2018.

a new one is coming out but it hasn't been finalized yet but in this survey it's sampled 500 companies across uh the geographical zones of nigeria or the geopolitical zone and in terms of the sample side you have um 70 percent of small skate businesses 20 medium scale businesses 10 percent are large businesses and these are the definitions we use they use in the sample size but here are the findings 95 percent of the businesses in nigeria are actually aware of actor and the signing of the agreement the awareness is uniform across firms and sizes 55 percent of the businesses believe nigerian business environment is currently hostile unsupported power supply taxes and tariffs access to credit and rural infrastructure are the top four challenges of the nigerian business ecosystem the sample businesses believe that the top three advantages of acta is a better business environment promotion of local businesses and business expansion physically aspirational there's nothing concrete that can come back to money the top three disadvantages of after however real and they are real threats they are the influx of substandard goods which is already happening the discouragement of local businesses already happening and the loss of revenue for nigeria which is happening on two fronts both internal sabotage by itself and its inefficient system and also by the fact that nigel loses money but the trade adjustment is killed the top three sources of uncertainty are possibilities that after we boost the economy um well again this is just aspirational and it's not really operational another overall 78 percent of the businesses believe that after we make a positive impact on local business 10 percent believe that the impact will be negative why 12 percent believe it will have no impact the consensus among the researchers is that the benefits of matter for business and economy depends on what and how each party handles their unique opportunities so at this stage i will say that you should permit me to change to my notes in form of this presentation which may be helpful um but let me leave the screen on where it is right now so i can talk to people with me i'm just going to change the screen so like okay my apologies so there the the the facts that we see is if you look at the business scale in nigeria you have to try number of enterprises in life here at about 41 million of which micro is numbers 99.8 percent of them the small business is about 71 and the medium business is about 1793. this is not an unusual usual database for you to have but it just shows you very well that you have the majority of your small businesses at the level of the micro which is about 99 percent and just one percent the proverbial one percent is the rate businesses that deliver revenue for the company that you are the big businesses and virtually all the policies that we have in place are such and skilled that they do not support the micro businesses and after itself would not even reveal any support for the micro businesses as you have it the recent research we have done has shown that there are basically very few things that could happen around these areas for you i decided therefore to ask mr brady a few things to help me understand how to deal with this because again people like myself we suffer from the problem of uh sometimes appearing high for routine and not getting to breast tax unfortunately i do so i asked some six questions which i thought i'd provide the answers to in a way that can make sure that that's my presentation and value and then i will take more questions of who's really as an sma owner what are the various information resources i can access to give me a better idea of the trade opportunity that's available within the african future now if you look at the presentation of the survey i showed you it says 98 we sent 94 percent of people are aware i can tell you for a fact that there's no way you can go to where you can actually pick up the right thing for you to do as an sme in nigeria today between the national action committee and after of which i i serve at the behest of the government of the private sector on some of the working groups and the national office of trade of nigeria a body that is not created by any legal document it is instructed to understand that who is definitely in charge of running trade and driving the trade policy we assume it is the ministry of trade and an investment and we also assume that we have something called the nigeria investment and promotion council where you and this article is but i can tell you that the major challenge we have in government is that not everybody is all singing from the same handbook and that is one of the biggest challenges we have and whereas you can pick up information in pamphlets and faqs or whatever you we still do not yet have a coherent position in terms of it so how would the smes engage i'm sure that they will try to find ways in which they can engage and i've shared this with you mr brady i can provide sources where you can see the national policy on msmes the effects got by site and so on but yet i'm still looking for what you want to do which sectors does nigeria want to promote and most importantly a critical question when are we reviewing our tariff structures in order to align them to provide a competitive advantage nigerian needs given the high cost of production in nigeria which makes it a less competitive environment so it is easier for you to produce a lot more from god and bring it into that now to produce actually nigeria because your most significant cost is energy cost then you add on to that is security add on to that what are called the inherent cost of non-state actors functioning as state actors so you have about 45 to 40 percent of your costs according to the issues uh legal chambers of course an industry already in that already in that place already so for you sms to compete you already you have one hand tied behind your back within the after group let me take the second most important question it says is there a platform where else and miseries can come together to discuss with the relevant government agencies yes they are yeah and they have these conversations have been going on the highest level in fact this is one of those conversations that led to the near embarrassing situation whereby the advanced team had already gone ahead towards the signing and we had to pull back to address one or two issues which were of serious concern to the manufacturing association of nigeria and the anasima those issues bothered around rules of origin basically around rules of origin and to the advantage of nigeria it gladdens my heart to report that these issues have been addressed and resolved and that the national action committee having operated without without a clear direction is able to then begin to work with the national offices of trade again and the ministry and the trade desk in the ministry and they have something they call sme aggregation program i'm not a great fan of programs i would rather see policy but there has not been any policy in that regard but they just have these programs and it sounds really nice so for those who are interested you can read up on it and make some really nice interesting conversations but beyond that that's it now if you are in the space where i operate these are creative vessels you ask how can i protect my products and how do i get into the original value and this is one of my own areas of interest really which are called the face to negotiation phase and i'm going to take a pause here to make sure i get my points everybody understands that innovation creativity and branding represents the critical largest amount of value addition it is not a coincidence that the leading countries in the world have the largest patents intellectual property rights there are some fundamental issues around what we have in nigeria and and i would like to be enlightened on it our definition of what is a patent hasn't changed much from kid1 our definition of what intellectual property rights is and the process of getting intellectually priced rights that are globally acceptable is still not yet in place in nigeria and if we're going to sign this agreement this year you will find out that not only do you find creative people and including myself go to sign agreements in ghana for example because you do not have it in idea this becomes a major challenge the second major issue around here is the role of wrecks the regional economic communities some of us have the conceptual thought process that the after should have been an agreement amongst regional economic communities rather than individual countries in those way most communities can therefore build themselves up and then they trade amongst themselves more like what happens in uh within the sadc the south african region and this challenge is that for you to get anything done smes would have to join become members of chambers of commerce or trade associations because those are the only ones which the regional economic communities deal with for example echoers will not do that xyz an example that has always bothered me is the example of court view business um doctor or i cannot remember the full name cause of the business solutions accomplished in idea who set up companies in about three west african countries and was actually driven out of those countries because they did not have any enabling support and the laws just kept on changing and so if you decide to go into those countries to offer services we rest assured that you do not have the support especially from the nigerian embassy to start with which is what one of most of these countries are using to enable them to do trade in natural effort a full fact most embassies today now now make sure that the economic council has a trade desk that is basically driving and helping businesses compete and solve problems if we are going to do after it is not just an after thing that is done in the trade ministry it is something that has to be done via the ministry of foreign affairs as well and so the rule that the rule between the trade the chambers of commerce the trade associations the minister of enough is such that every country you go to you basically have a staging post and what you find called the nipc and all those other pseudo agencies created for a different time means that the architecture of how we want to engage with africa has to change which is one of those challenges at the national action community uh that i do not believe we are voting around to start addressing already but this will open up new changes and for those organizations like man chambers of commerce i'm sure that if they understand what they're really doing and i'm sure some of them do very well this is a great opportunity for them to reestablish value and relevance the third one is how do i increase my sme chances of getting access to funding from banks such as the afg and africa the truth of the matter is that there are quite a number of opportunities but again it's about a function of scale is it most of the businesses we have they want to solo and do it all you know you're basically trading you can only trade if you do not have volume and size on your advantage you will not be able to get it and that's why you see that chat i showed you they're one percent or they're five percent who get most of all this thing because they they have the requirements in there so the requirements by this agency should be what we should focus on if you look at the requirements not too many sms will qualify for it and that's where you find that where i think it was somebody one of your programs talking about the concept of cooperatives or people walking together again femi said something very interesting at the start of the shoot he said something about globalization but here's the thing the consequences of globalization is that most advanced countries are now changing that concept from globalization to globalization understanding and appreciating their whole value change in playing in a global world but understanding that they will localize most of those value of productions in those entities they are trading with rather than ship them it's a subject matter i can discuss for that but in terms of access to facilities the more popular one is a free eczema under what they call the working capital guarantee program and i've seen it work for a number of companies and they've used it to turn themselves around now an interesting question is what are the specific investment opportunities from single market for africa you see this question in itself is a consultancy opportunity so to answer it i felt that it was important that i explained to you all that there is always opportunities in everything depending on what you look at if you look at you may not see opportunity or you if you look very carefully you will see well here is the thing how many have taken time to read the different protocols before after i went through a list of agreements and i may share with you there are about 88 types of agreements that nigeria has signed on to across africa 88 with different countries around trade how these agreements will be harmonized together as strong will be cancelled and some will be brought together it's a major challenge and i think that to any of you here should sell the proposal to government to help help them sort it out i'm not sure we have a clear idea of what it is we've all signed up into and so we jump from one agreement to the other not looking back at the other agreements that's really crazy but we see quite a number of opportunities here and we listed some of them here some of which i'll make available should be requested for but a cautionary note i picked up through my research conversations as follows people ask the opportunities for investments are available but can a nigerian business for example go to round out ghana and be treated equally or better and and without due respect this is one of the questions where i said and naivety sometimes underscores the fact that uh we haven't taken on the issue of trade and business very seriously nobody hands anything to anyone there's a reason why if you have value they will invite you to come here and say set up your plan to return the whole idea is they wanted to change but that question is perfect because it then raises the most many dimensions to our approach to trade at the single market goal for example what is the value in place of bilateral multilateral agreements that we sign how do we address the limitations of tariffs and taxes how do we deal with the challenge of non-trade barriers as countries become to be a little bit more protectionist in their approach and for good reasons too and what is a place for productivity and cooperative advantages in an economy because this is an answer these four questions that matters to you why would you for a country like nigeria saying that i want to go to other markets you have the largest market which other market are you trying to service because in your country for example your market is not organized yet as disorganized as it is we then begin to find the chinese coming here and disaggregating and decoupling the market in such a way that they are able to achieve sales or what i call the saturization of the nigerian products and consumer market i guess this is where the question around our trade and investment uh over hacking policy and the absence of it becomes critical and this is the last one would be famous favorite uh question uh i think he likes talking about the mainstreaming of cooperatives within the after framework and i and i can see him nodding and you are absolutely correct hundred percent um there are very few efforts at main streaming cooperatives within the after framework uh this is a defect but in conceptualization but most importantly it has been a problem with facebook in nigeria um they are coordinating things to bring together sms it's all about rhetoric you know the after sectaria the commissioner for trade and industry says that the secretariat is working on bringing smes together and training if you read the nigerian news headlines and information you always hear things nigeria plans to we would do by this time we are thinking of you never hear this is what we did this is what we learned this is it's always what we are going to do what we are taking out which means there is really nothing going to happen so um to all those who are from government listening just consider this as being a very quiet uh comment on the reality is that it is rhetoric the unfortunate thing is that cooperatives are still seen and treated as an informal and unregistered organization not as the clusters needed to deliver interventions to change the economy so every time we talk about we want to grow business and want to do business there is a way to do so you treat these cooperatives as clusters rather than individual those micro 41 million i showed you they must come together as cooperatives and that's the only way but we treat them like outside as an ecosystem but if there's any good news it must have come from the announcement of the partnership between the national cooperative financing agency of nigeria and the abuja cooperative federation who signed a partnership with the african diaspora chamber of commerce against thank those of you in the diaspora to provide access to funds for properties in africa nigeria be one of the prime destinations um all things being equal we hope that the funds will be used properly but it will build up but to support what you are doing for me i think you are absolutely correct the cooperative is the way to go we haven't done much in that regard and it is my desire that we will do much so madame coming these are just my general thoughts i would be happy to um to take questions and to explore in more detail from our esteemed participants thank you very much oh thank you thank you so very much the base was really really wonderful um it was um the presentation was so simple and easy to follow and yes a whole lot was shared within a very short time thank you so very much we really appreciate it this is our questions and answer sessions and the comments you can put your questions on the chat or you can actually raise up your head by using the eraser feature or you can raise up your hand physically and we going to allow you to to speak meanwhile before the questions start coming in mr afami boy do you have some um comments and questions yeah or mutes or meet yourself dedicate how did you know that i was going to have some comments i saw your eyes and i understand those guys there is somebody else on this platform when we have virtual machines she's always looking at my my compartment i didn't see the institute on this platform by the way thank you so much my brother my boss and our guest today um mr femi away me i know that somewhere towards the end you still give us a final word but uh just to facilitate the thought process for our student participants today you have mentioned some very very key um i don't want to call them challenges i don't want to say criticisms but they are nuggets that we need to think about first and foremost um the market of africa is so big maybe the largest single component of it is uh that of nigeria because of population but when you aggregate the whole of africa how much of it can one small micro or medium enterprise satisfy probably not possible and so i am very excited at your suggestion and agreement that for smes to actually take advantage of this opening opportunity they need to quickly begin to seek affiliations memberships groupings trade groups associations where they can actually aggregate bring in from here bringing from there and then you have the volumes because the afc fta is a trade of volumes i thank you for that this is also a call on the other side the government side preparation preparation somebody said um look is it success is what happens when preparation meets with opportunity and like you said for 58 years we have been preparing one ethnic group in nigeria has this phonic axiom asking a question if you spend three years to learn how to become to be a madman how much time will be left for you to actually manifest insanity so i think that um you kind of zero that one into having an economic direction diplomatic is it economic the policy or whatever it is which one are we going to be known for just to tickle our um thinking faculties smes are here today they want to know how to jump into that market and so the questions you are going to be asking uh mr away me and i'm sure there are a few other experts here who can contribute how do we address those challenges thank you very much just a quick one for me yes i just need to make a few clarification irrespective of those arguments i mentioned um and i hope i can do that while here just a few clarifications concerning that um as a matter of integrity um so if you can see the screen to the gentleman who works huh so i've listed them here trade an agreement between nigeria and african countries for example with south africa we have about 32 bilateral trade agreements anemones just with south africa we have one with nigeria republic for transportation nfpc signed another one with the algerian national gas corporation also last year for the trans-saharan pipeline in 2005 we sent another one with pressure forfeitures on the project uh we have a west african gas pipeline agreed between nigeria being a republic to go in ghana to enable gas to be supplied from us troubles to other countries ah in number five we have nigeria benin we probably signed a treaty to establish aquarius lagos abuja corridor building their countries kenya and nigeria signed an mou and three trade agreements targeted at a proportion of faith and agriculture between the two countries nigeria also went into a bilateral agreement that which led to the issue of this idea that would commit free entry for business nigeria has one with uganda what you call the nigerian you gathered permanent commission in 2019. nigeria could divorce has a bi-natural agreement as well nigeria and morocco has won also around gas which the nigerian sovereign investment performance is actually investing in nigeria morocco has other ones also on on different issues quite a number of them again nigeria has one with south africa nigeria has one with algeria the key thing you want to look at in all these things is what were those businesses that were assigned i did the businesses that the majority of people are doing in the next currently or they will be doing in the next few years so we sign most of these arguments that is conveniently most of us forget and never talk about it because they do not detail to the level of sms and that was the point i was trying to say i just thought i'd make that point thank you i thank you so very much sir dr peter i am thank you very much i'm here okay uh can we see you on is your camera working as it is okay thank you so very much we are really happy that you have joined us and that you are willing to uh share some of your valuable knowledge with us please go ahead thank you very much kemi and um thank you my brother kenny buildi let me also thank mr wilmi for sharing very invaluable and thoughtful working thoughts but my worry is this if we're talking african trade or cross-border trade i'm wondering which categories of the msms were expecting to play in this space i am saying this against the background of the fact that um of the 41.5 million msms that we have in nigeria how competitive are they how productive are they how how are the world places are structured to play effectively especially at the there are critical enterprise group inhibitors if you check the national stock exchange growth board initiative you will discover that out of the 41.5

million msms only nine are listed there and that speaks to one thing that a whole lot of the msms that we're talking about here are not ready to compete they don't have structures they are inhibited they don't have what it takes to compete globally i think that is where we should be looking at mr william mentioned the fact that he mentioned four factors one is um emotional energy taxes tariff and um access to credit but the truth of the matter is that most of our msms cannot access credit because of their foundational defect i think if we want to be having this conversation we should be looking at how what are those critical growth inhibitors that set msm is back and then of course which of these embellishments should we be looking at to help position them to be able to compete effectively you know in international trade a whole lot there are a whole lot of issues so it is this is beyond us talking about i mean classifying msms the question we should be looking at even at the level of policy making is how do we deliberately position or help msms overcome critical growth inhibitors that positions them and already enhance their productivity and competitiveness i don't know those are the issues because it's like you want to go and compete or you want to participate in the olympics just like what is playing out in the in the world played out in the current olympics where because we are if we were ill-prepared we went down flocked so are we expecting that msm is without preparing them to participate or competitively we want to take them to to the world stage and we end up being being disgraced is that what we're talking about so if you ask me sir i want to suggest that as we are having this conversation on perfecting the free trade agreement and defining the rules of sms we should be looking at how we can help position msm is to compete effectively that's that's that's the way i think we should go talking about grouping and clustering and cooperative strategy just a couple of days ago we were discussing with my brother femi bowie that all of this conversation that is going on there is no conversation around how cooperatives can participate you know and then there's a need for us to begin to look towards that that direction and that conversation is ongoing okay so finally i want to i want to say that it is important for us to look beyond just embedding clustering msmes and just saying let's go and participate the truth of the matter is that our msmes have structural defects they have foundational challenges and so we should begin to look at how best we can help them overcome those critical growth inhibitors i am saying this because that's the space we are playing i'm a business development service provider and those are the issues we are looking at we have been able to develop a framework you know to engage ms smith again i'm talking about pure privacy sector development some of these conversations are not there is nowhere probably the public sector can comprehend and then when withdrawing prisoner inspiration from from the committee of donor agencies you know the subject matter of business development services that is an emerging phenomenon okay and it started only way back in 2000 when the committee of donald just started thinking about how to support msms so we have not been able to develop enough capacity you know to drive robust private sector development in nigeria and so that gap is there look i have this and so finally i want to submit that as we continue this conversation on promoting trade and having msm is to participate there is a critical gap that we need to bring to the table and that table and that conversation is how can we effectively i mean how can we have msm is to overcome critical growth inhibitors and position them to compete government compete effectively in international trade thank you so very much doctor that was my humble submission very humble submission indeed is very much permitted to quickly respond to doctor aim it's important because he's raising he uses the word finally three times a time so let me put you there finally three times but here's the thing that i'm gonna explain with you i always like to back things up as i said to you okay so here is um you pay attention to this documentary this particular screen reflects what's uh the the wrongs at the nigerian um action committee or trade i've looked at and this is across africa so when you keep on talking about structural defects and critical voting libitos these are not limited to nigeria alone this is across africa in about six major areas if you look at it really insecurities there reduction trade practices are there regulatory cost strains are there funding constraints are there infrastructural constraints that their productivity and production issues are there it's a joy for me because you're a given business development specialist to then understand that the competitive advantage we are talking about is that for each person there are different risk levels in their own countries which offers them either their productivity advantages or their competitiveness advantages that they have i agree with you however that for nigeria if you want to get into this kind of party you have to define for yourself how do i create incentives for my businesses to be able to overcome some of these challenges that allows us to be able to compete to win 100 you are absolutely correct but it does not make it mutually exclusive therefore that the concept of aggregate does not also become part of the solution because it may offer in itself an economist or skill i mentioned dr ayam to also quickly step up to another level here which is to show you some of nigeria's edge within the african disadvantage you have put like the probably your about what is that you have put your hand in my in my in my mind if you look at some of these advantages there you will see here that the greatest challenge that nigeria continues to have is not the lack of knowledge that we all share here or the lack of understanding how to put it together it is then it is two things have been the overall objective very clear objective and then understanding how to plug everything in there if you let me cast your mind back by way of misdirection is that nigeria stopped implementing a national development plan in fact i posted that nigeria stopped operating its national uh planning commission almost about 18 years ago we don't have that and that is a missing link in putting governors together to work for a strategic objective and so you find out that what they will be thinking of will be like this when we talk about accomplish we'll be surfing like this did you have you noticed these are the companies that you have been talking about promoting how do we help the uv how do we do that routine so sooner or later you will find out that in order to find a way to move on you the the lines between state capital and the oligopoly becomes blood to the extent that you then understand that their own interpretation of the aggregates we are talking about is that that all small businesses collapse into it just to have big ones alone who can form which was the thinking we had there is a place where we can have a transport type model which is almost like a curacao model or a cable model which is used and there is a place for where any society cannot operate without keeping a focus on those micro businesses itself and taking away those limitations in order to allow them to survive and thrive not only from employment position but overall productivity of the people and it is in this regard sir that i conclude and this time i'm saying finally he wants okay okay if you don't mind let me just try to bridge up the two um opinions there is no doubt yes and then i was looking for something please permit me i made this com contribution on another platform yesterday so not to waste time i'm just going to read it out so somebody says standardization is the key to boosting nigeria's exports that was the comment my response i said good key but not the key th i as key just one of them competitiveness is the lowest common factor it includes standardization that is to enable the product or service stand out against competing similar products or services but other factors will naturally include pricing this brings into play the various infrastructures that go into producing the product or service and cost of procuring them if not available or if they are inadequate financing costs logistics cost etc export readiness capacity of the players at all levels the exporter the broker the banker the government etc market access and market entry strategies this is why a consultation-based export strategy and robust basket of export incentives remain a scenic one for nigeria's export success i was making this contribution on another platform that addresses nigeria talking trade we try as much as possible to make it global why did i read this out because between mr oyemi and dr aim we have kind of collapsed the solutions into these specific action plans but who build the cat who comes to play the uh action nearing i don't know well professor oleska told me that you can be so good in english that you invent your own words so i'm taking the license now to invent the word auctioneering so who is going to action near the things that we are talking about here this morning there is no way no way let afcft secretariat let it come to edumata in or tauroni in kanu or wherever within nigeria let it be under the north of nigeria or nigerians unless the smes are enabled unless their capacity is built unless they are able to do international competitive trading there is no way that that country is going to make any uh any profit from afcfda uh mr awami talked about afcfts having started about 58 years ago how long has agoa been in existence the africa growth and opportunity act has entered 21 years the same way with afcfta nigeria was one of the reasons why america conceptualized the africa growth and opportunity act we were at at that time i was one of the consultants i was working with maggie in the american embassy in nigeria as of the early 2000s on agua if you go to the agua platform today 98 of what is recorded as nigeria's trade with agua is crude oil so when is it that that country is going to be prepared to take advantage of africa growth and opportunity act and the 88 or is it 32 out of the 88 other agreements that femi has railed out today those are the things but the question that i still will be happy uh maybe as we go on and i'm hopeful that talking trade will uh generate the interest from the legitimate and relevant agencies of government to learn before they come we it's like if mountain would not go to muhammad muhammad would go to the mountain the talking trade team has made a commitment that when critical issues and comments and recommendations such as mr away miss presentation today and the contributions that you guys are making from the floor who will package them and send them to the relevant agencies of the relevant governments that are involved and i use government in plural because sometimes we could be talking something that is germane to the ghanaian government for example there's no reason why one has been the country uh facilitator focal point for ecowas trade experts for several years if i cannot send the outcomes of our discussions to every country at least on the ecowas uh sub region we will do that please dedicate let's take more comments and contributions okay thank you so very much actually most of the questions or rather the questions were already answered uh by our guest already and let me see if any other thing is there if there's any other question or comment like i said earlier you are free to raise up your hand using the future or actually raising up your hand ladies before you call doctor i am again and because we are talking about trade and competitiveness i will please um employ you to allow our last month's guest speaker teacher to make a comment here because i know also that there is a forum already been planned to talk about these challenges that are inhibiting the nigerian sme from exporting please if you don't mind let me execute that that's not true madam city or joe we welcome you again thank you it was great having you the other time uh if you can please uh omit yourself and um if your camera is functioning that would be wonderful otherwise you can just submit yourself so we can hear from you this program you have coming up we have been seeing the flyer you are still on mute i saw you try to omit yourself now okay okay can you hear me now yes we can hear you i love that let me see if you can hi oh i'm not in my glasses right now all right i had to just jump from where i was to this place um so great great uh i've been listening to a whole lot of uh you know smes we always we've always been the eye of the storm unfortunately but it's very important as well that we need to start thinking of how can we solve our problems how can we solve our problems quite a number of the problems also process related policies yes we have all sorts of policies also agreements i think i speak out almost 80 of that almost about 80 agreements and i'm wondering how this exists dear lord where is the place where hashem is in all of this so because of this because the nato contracting and exporters will be having the third tunnel meeting part of one of the roles of the emperor and that's the network of factional exporters is to ensure that we also have dialogue with government evidence based because that's very important we're talking about the challenges we're facing right now the issues of the bottlenecks we need to also bring evidence to the table so that's very important and in in these conversations we also want practitioners to take the front seats not the backseat the practitioners are the ones saying these are the issues i i remember on this platform i think last week someone actually raised the particular constraints through the shipping lines for example and this is a real situation on ongoing right now so indeed people like that we want to come forward unless they will talk about the issues that should be evidence based let's government also begin to see where the problems are even ourselves practice as practitioners where we can help and support the system to also work and that's very important to us at implement this this particular program is going to hold on between the sisters wednesday it's a webinar how old in the morning 11 a.m to 1 p.m this is the third in the series the last we had was in may i think so this is the third this year and it's very important that we join in i'm not let me see if i can i can just quickly glance at the site so but i'm sure we have a fly one of the flyers on this platform as well so be great to have everyone joining this is the time to lend our voices to the issues the theme is ensuring competitiveness of nigeria's online expo key current challenges and practicable solutions wednesday august 25 2021 11 a.m to 1 important that we're all there as practitioners this might just be the platform where we can get governments we should also system with us and we're able to say this is it how how can we solve those problems and this is how policies also come to be it becomes quite inclusive we have the voices of the exporters themselves uh past you know we are part of the process so that's very important just tell me somebody thanks for thanks okay to the opportunity to talk about this again uh we'll be we'll be sending the flyers up very widely and we expect that let's find some time let's be in there 25th of august 11 a.m let's talk about the issues um on the employee side we're also going to be looking at getting the critical stakeholders into the room that day both from private sector and government uh we're trying our best to make sure that those damage presents are actually present at that time or it makes it more the results we can begin to see some results if we have the kind of people that should be sitting there discussing of you there please let's let's make it a day thank you lady kay thank you so very much um okay so that's it yes okay uh are you sharing your screen now no that was from um i shared it oh okay thank you because i was actually going to read um something from uh on femi no way okay so now before i go ahead someone puts down the chat forum on the chat group uh are you going to share the the recording after this we always have a recording shared on our youtube channel we actually have a youtube channel talking to the where we have kept all the former uh the previous uh the previous uh discussions you're going to find them there and this one will equally be there as well we usually send the links to all attendees so watch out in your email you will see the links for you to actually view the recording and i see what that the action plans or points after this session do we leave this to government okay working committee here leads the initiative and work with government what working arrangements can we have between the private sector and the government who will harmonize these 88 trade-related agreements i mean you want to start yeah yes i i seem to have dr ian san hope so let me concede and allow him to respond or maybe he forgot to lower the hand no i'm right here i'm right here okay i thought the hand will be telling you right now okay i just quickly want to respond to two issues one raised by um by dr muy de uh in terms of um what did he call it auctioneering and then but before i speak to that let me quickly say something about what he said about shipping challenge mr boyd and i have been reading the book of lamentation on how ships come loaded to nigeria and go back empty for years for decades we'll be having that conversation so you begin to wonder why we do the things i mean do things the way we do things so that challenge has been there it's not an emerging phenomenon it has been there for decades it's like a lifestyle for us you know i'm talking about the international trade so i think we really begin to need to i'm happy that tt is um i mean talk about the the upcoming event that they need to have our stakeholders in the room to have a conversation on how best to remove some of these impediments so um having said that action nearing mr boyd yes sir it would matter that you said something about agua and the conversation about common trade in africa that has lasted five over five decades the the truth of the matter is that yes policy formulation is key but you see what we should be considering is in the over five decades that this talks about policy formulation articulation and implementation has been going on how well have this translated to measurable outcomes so my question is we cannot begin to i mean or continue to insist that yes unless government moves the private sector will not work i'm having anything and my strategy to doing what we are doing at the level of providing business development services for msms is thinking private strictly yes we can be guided by policy msma policy as it is we don't even have a trade policy in nigeria so maybe the only thing that we have uh is the msma policy we thought we can be guarded by that and then but our strategy to creating impact is private sector driven and having said that sir i want the the way we can achieve impact is for us to converge all of us that share these common thoughts you know about that are progressive if you like you know there's a need for us to converge and begin to see how we can create momentum you know to drive sustainable impact so that's what i want to say about auctioneering because if you wait for government we wait for another 50 something years they are go watching it's not working and then the african trade is here how we shall it work even as we speak right now we are not even ready you know so those are some of the concerns i thought i should um i should share okay thank you so very much doctor and i have um this person now please if you are there we would like you to sorry again um i have just been informed that uh we have um aisha abubakar with us um immediate past minister of industry trade and investment on behalf of the team and all of us here i'd like to welcome you and that you are here means that somehow government is beginning to be here i know um they will say is x this extract in nigeria but i also know the rich that this person has she's also the co-chair of the network of practicing normal exporters of nigeria and whatever it is wherever we arrive at this morning especially in like c

2021-08-10 07:26

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