…Revenue, major milestone to achieve economic recovery plan-minister
Nigeria can generate 4.5 billion dollars annually from cashew exportation, executive director, Nigerian Export Promotion Council, Mr Olusegun Awolowo, has said.
Awolowo announced this in a press statement by head, Corporate Communications of the council, Mr Joe Itah, in Abuja, yesterday.
The executive director, who said this at a facility visit to the Valency Cashew Processing Limited, urged the company to sustain its production capacity and focus more on value-addition for the product.
“In view (of the need) to scale up production and processing of cashew for exports for more foreign exchange for the country, I implore the company to pay attention to quality standard and value-addition of cashew for exports. This is because the commodity commands a global export value of over 4.5 billion dollars annually, which Nigeria should aim to grab a fair market share,’’ Awolowo said.
He said that as at 2015, Nigeria produced a mere 160,000 tonnes of the nuts worth 253 million dollars for exports. According to him, currently the larger quantity of the production capacity is Raw Cashew Nuts (RCN) whereas processing even 50 per cent of same volume will create about 9,000 jobs.
Awolowo explained that cashew was one of the 13 National Strategic Export Products chosen by Federal Government under Category B of Zero Oil Plan.
Meanwhile, the federal government has reassured Nigerians of its commitment to make sure the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan is achieved.
The Minister of Budget and National Planning Senator Udoma Udo Udoma made this call during a media chat in Abuja yesterday. According to the minister, the major challenge in the implementation of the ERGP is revenue generation. “The plan says that we have not so much of a debt problem but revenue generation. Once the revenue goes up, then we would have enough money to service our debt. The challenge is getting our revenues up because when the revenue goes down, the debt ratio rises,” he said.
Explaining further, Sen. Udoma said a plan to raise the revenue has been drawn which comprises of short and medium term. The short term encompasses the restructuring of some government assets to release some revenue immediately which according to him, a committee is already set up by the President to achieve this plan.
On the medium term, there would be an increase in the level of tax collection. “At the moment, our tax in the GDP ratio is 6 per cent while on the average, it is meant to be 68 per cent. Therefore, we have to take our tax to GDP ratio up to 15 per cent which means our revenue will triple and if this happens, the debt will not be so large,” he explained further.
To achieve effective revenue generation through taxes, the federal government is introducing efficiency in tax collection through the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) by getting more people and companies to pay taxes due to them as well as efficiency in customs collection.
Government agencies would also bring their budget which ministry of finance will go through and make sure the agencies spends only within their budgets. Salaries and pensions will also be tracked to ensure payment is made only to people who exist.