The World Trade Organisation Director General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has disclosed the organisation will work to deliver technical assistance, training and quality upgrade to unlock some bottlenecks confronting Nigeria.
Okonjo-Iweala stated this on Monday in Abuja when she visited the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Adeniyi Adebayo, and Minister of State in the ministry, Mariam Katagum.
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According to her, WTO is an economic institution that could work with other institutions to support investments and technical assistance to mitigate Nigeria’s economic challenges, noting that the organisation was created with World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
She added that these three institutions, by working together, could deliver a lot.
She said that Nigeria’s share in world trade was 0.33 per cent which showed a small fraction of what Nigeria could do.
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“Our share in Africa’s trade is 19 per cent, which is below our share of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This means we can turn it around.”
“I like to look at the optimistic side, when I saw this I knew that there was potential for us to do much. And that is the message I want to convey to the country.
“This means that we must step up our action on the economy, we must do better and harder in several ways because of our youth who are waiting for jobs.
“Nigeria needs to focus on adding value on transitioning. We are an oil and gas-based economy, and that has sustained us and still will. But the world is moving away from fossil fuel,” she said.
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She explained that trade negotiations on agricultural issues were very important for Nigeria adding that the country was active in agriculture and also in the Joint Statement Initiatives, ongoing prolateral negotiations.
According to her, Nigeria is equally involved in E-commerce, services domestic regulations, investment facilitation, micro small and medium enterprises and women in trade.
While stating that Nigeria was 103 out of 167 countries in logistics, she observed that it was a potential area Nigeria could invest in to improve its logistics.
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