British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr Richard Montgomery has claimed that the trade relations between Nigeria and the United Kingdom currently stands at about seven billion pounds sterling.
Montgomery who made this disclosure yesterday revealed that Nigeria and the UK recently signed a new agreement on enhanced trade and investment partnership and agreed to work on a range of sectors.
He identified the sectors as agriculture, the creative industry, legal, financial services, and education.
Montgomery stated that trade between the UK and Nigeria is balanced.
“Trading by both countries is relatively balanced because the UK exports about four billion pounds sterling worth of goods and services to Nigeria while Nigeria exports to the UK about three billion pounds worth of goods. We need to do more because if you look at last year’s figure compared to the penultimate, there was not much of an increase in trade volume. It was an increase of about two per cent. So trade in the last few years has changed. And the aim of our enhanced trade and investment partnership is to boost trade and investment between both countries and also to raise these numbers.
“Nigeria can benefit and take advantage of a new post-Brexit trading agreement that the UK has put in place that is called the Developing Countries Trading Scheme (DCTS).
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“This scheme called the DCTS is one of the most generous schemes in the world in the sense that it removes tariffs on thousands of products from across the world to make free trade easier,” he said.
The envoy said that having visited many parts of Nigeria, the UK realised that Nigeria had at least 3,000 tariff-free products that it could export to the UK.
According to him, the enhanced trade investment partnership signed between the two countries in February is aimed at attracting more investment to the agricultural sector.
He said Nigeria could boost trade with the UK by exporting more of its agricultural products.
“In agricultural exports, Nigeria can export cashew, cotton, or cocoa from the middle belt.
“There are lots of commercial farmers involved in vegetables, which can be processed, and there is also timber. And we think that there’s a big potential for commercial agriculture in the future in Nigeria. You have the land, you have the people. The new trading scheme should be an opportunity for Nigeria. We can do more in financial and legal services.”
He said there were new technologies coming into the financial services sector which will greatly enhance the sector. He added that Nigeria has a huge creative industry which the UK recognised and was interested in.
“London is a good place for partnerships in the creative industry. So, we are hoping to promote those areas through partnership.”
He said two challenges of doing business in the UK that foreigners needed to take cognisance of were lack of knowledge on how to do business and also the standards (non-tariff barriers to trade)
He stated that a facility called the growth gateway run by the Department of Business and Trade was provided as a source of advice for anyone that intends to export to the UK.
Montgomery added that he was optimistic that the UK would do more trade in Nigeria because of the bold reforms by the Nigerian government.
He applauded the removal of the “crippling fuel subsidy”, tackling oil theft, getting oil revenues that manage the budget better, and also the foreign exchange reforms.
He said that those were critical in encouraging UK investors and banks to come back into the Nigerian market and do more trade, noting that the foreign exchange reforms were absolutely critical in this sense.