Business
UBA facilitated $1.34bn in non-oil export volume in 2021 – Akinyemi
Africa’s global bank, the United Bank for Africa (UBA) facilitated $1.34bn in non-oil export volume in 2021, representing 31 percent of the country’s total non-oil export volume for for the year, which stood at $4.38bn
The figure meant that UBA kept its spot as Nigeria’s number one export bank in 2021, a position it has maintained for three years running.
Muyiwa Akinyemi, the bank’s deputy managing director disclosed this on Saturday at the 2022 conference of the Financial Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN).
Akinyemi identified the country’s major items of non oil exports to include Cocoa, Cashew, Sesame, Seeds, Hibiscus, Fertilizers/Chemicals, Tobacco, Hides & Skin which accounted for 85% of total export.
He noted, however, that the discovery of crude oil brought a shift that has made the country to majorly depend on the oil sector to the neglect of other sectors.
According to him, this made the economy susceptible to fluctuations in revenue, occasioned by the usual instability associated with the prices of crude oil in the international market.
“Successive governments have made differing efforts at diversifying the revenue sources of the economy by promoting non-oil export trade which cumulatively impacts on overall economic growth”, Akinyemi said.
On some of UBA’s key interventions to facilitate export, he mentioned that the bank had developed a $200 million non-oil export trade financing programme to bridge working capital requirements of SMEs/commercial exporters at concessionary interest rate and favourable collateral structure and provided project and structured trade financing to enhancing export capacities of manufacturing.
He said the bank had also provided project and structured trade financing to enhance export capacities of manufacturing as well as commodity aggregators; dedicated export desks and an export manager for our business to lead the charge of its export business arrangements, even as it created UBA Afritrade to facilitate regional trade and settlements that start and end within the UBA ecosystem across Africa.
Akinyemi identified some of the challenges facing the country’s non oil export drive to include insecurity across the country across commodity hubs, including industrial areas, dearth of skilled manpower and low export capacity of export focused entities, high cost of transportation due to the current state of our road network inadequate functional rail transportation network, absence of rail line to the ports, inadequate export port infrastructure; not 24/7 as well as Ports administration resulting to delay in handling cargoes/containers, high cost of power and inadequate supply, role duplication by various government agencies including multiple checkpoints, absence and high cost of shipping, as well as un-competitiveness of Nigerian export commodities, among others.