Post by Trade facilitator on Oct 22, 2014 14:25:49 GMT 1
THE Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) has commenced efforts to establish local marketing structures across the country in a bid to efficiently service its export markets.
According to the NEPC, the move became necessary in order to address marketing challenges like product traceability, break in supply chain among others that emerged as a result of low-coordinated local marketing structures.
Speaking at a forum themed "Organising merchant operators into Export Marketing Groups to address product supply challenges", in Lagos, Tuesday, the Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of NEPC, Olusegun Awolowo explained that for Nigerian exporters to properly capture the international market share, a marketing structure that connects production with actual export must be created.
Awolowo, who was represented by the Head, Market Development Department of NEPC, Matthew Iranloye stated that the council had observed that about 80 per cent of agricultural commodities exports, including fresh and processed food items are done by merchant exporters, thus implying that the products are collected from the open markets.
"It is worthy to note that effective and efficient servicing of export market is a function of local marketing structure a nation is able to put in place. The practice of merchant exporters buying form the open market poses a lot of challenges to the export environment.
"For instance, issues like the traceability of the producers of the produce exported, quality issue in relation to the frequent alerts on aflatoxin, in line with international best practices among others remain a source of concern that should be addressed.
"To this end, NEPC through the establishment of a marketing structure by creating a formation of export merchants into 'Export Marketing Groups' hopes to address this concern. This move will allow the merchants to always source their produce and products from traceable farmers and processors respectively as well as make both parties to be trained together on application of international best practices", he added.
He explained that in institutionalizing EMG, the council would match-make identified export merchants alongside product/production clusters and farmers/processors of major agricultural produce to counter the identified challenges.
"EMG would not only determine supply flows and consistency in quality and standards of products from Nigeria, it would solve the problems of product traceability thereby raising the brand value of made-in-Nigeria goods. By implication, the new strategy from NEPC would build strong local marketing structures for exportable agricultural products", he stressed.
Zonal Coordinator, NEPC, Lagos, Mrs Evelyn Obidike urged stakeholders to embrace the scheme in order to engender growth of non-oil export market.
Source: allafrica.com/stories/201410220358.html
According to the NEPC, the move became necessary in order to address marketing challenges like product traceability, break in supply chain among others that emerged as a result of low-coordinated local marketing structures.
Speaking at a forum themed "Organising merchant operators into Export Marketing Groups to address product supply challenges", in Lagos, Tuesday, the Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of NEPC, Olusegun Awolowo explained that for Nigerian exporters to properly capture the international market share, a marketing structure that connects production with actual export must be created.
Awolowo, who was represented by the Head, Market Development Department of NEPC, Matthew Iranloye stated that the council had observed that about 80 per cent of agricultural commodities exports, including fresh and processed food items are done by merchant exporters, thus implying that the products are collected from the open markets.
"It is worthy to note that effective and efficient servicing of export market is a function of local marketing structure a nation is able to put in place. The practice of merchant exporters buying form the open market poses a lot of challenges to the export environment.
"For instance, issues like the traceability of the producers of the produce exported, quality issue in relation to the frequent alerts on aflatoxin, in line with international best practices among others remain a source of concern that should be addressed.
"To this end, NEPC through the establishment of a marketing structure by creating a formation of export merchants into 'Export Marketing Groups' hopes to address this concern. This move will allow the merchants to always source their produce and products from traceable farmers and processors respectively as well as make both parties to be trained together on application of international best practices", he added.
He explained that in institutionalizing EMG, the council would match-make identified export merchants alongside product/production clusters and farmers/processors of major agricultural produce to counter the identified challenges.
"EMG would not only determine supply flows and consistency in quality and standards of products from Nigeria, it would solve the problems of product traceability thereby raising the brand value of made-in-Nigeria goods. By implication, the new strategy from NEPC would build strong local marketing structures for exportable agricultural products", he stressed.
Zonal Coordinator, NEPC, Lagos, Mrs Evelyn Obidike urged stakeholders to embrace the scheme in order to engender growth of non-oil export market.
Source: allafrica.com/stories/201410220358.html
