The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Investment, Ambassador, Nura Abba Rimi, has revealed that over 100 enterprises in Nigeria have keyed into the European Union’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP).
He said this while hosting the visiting European Union General Taxation and Customs Union (EU-TAUXID) delegation at his Ministry Headquarters in Abuja on Monday as contained in a statement released.
The EU’s GSP eliminates import taxes on items entering the EU market from vulnerable developing nations. By eliminating such import levies, EU’s GSP assists developing countries in reducing poverty and creating jobs based on international norms and principles such as labour and human rights, environmental and climate protection, and good governance.
The Permanent Secretary stated, “We have over 100 companies that have keyed into these programmes and effort is being made to disseminate information in all geo- political zone of the country and to let interested people and companies know about the conditions that have to be met”
According to Nura, “The system came into existence in 1971, we did not key into the system till 2019 that is about three decades after it started notwithstanding, Nigeria is making giant stride in order to capitalise on the opportunity in order to expand our exports, this goes side by side with the quality of the goods we produce in the country”
“Goods going into European Union must originate from Nigeria under certificate of origin, it also has to be certified and we have a system of certification to ensure that those goods really conform with the standard for the EU, in order to benefit from the GSP, I want to assure you of our preparedness and readiness for successful partnership”, he told the EU delegates.”
While delivering her remarks, the Head of the Ministry’s Trade Department, Rachel Mande George, stated, “The European Union Director-General, Taxation and Customs Union (TAUXID), Gary Williamson, is on a trade mission in Nigeria to access the GSP Preferential Rules of Origin.”
It was said that “the meeting is aimed at bringing together stakeholders from FMITI, Customs and the EU delegation to discuss on critical policy issues associated with the European Union Generalised System of Preference, the EU -REX system with the objective of addressing key challenges”
In his speech, the European Union Director-General of Taxation and Customs Union stated, “We have 65 countries in the GSP scheme, Nigeria is one of them.
“GSP is to give you preference tariffs under unilateral agreement, you can send goods to the EU and you gain preferences, unfortunately we do not get preference for sending goods to Nigeria, that will require a bilateral trade agreement, which might happen one day.”
He went on to say “we have in Lagos where exporter of frozen fish exports its product to EU , we can see the advantage of the GSP scheme from this angle, We also had a meeting in Lagos with Nigeria Export Promotion Council, which was very useful, where we got to understand the issues with the exporting into the EU”.
“We are hopeful we can have a little information from you on how the GSP works in Nigeria; at the end of the week, we hope to draft a report, the report will explain what happened during the monitoring visit; if there is anything we find that we need to bring to your attention, we can provide some recommendations to you, and we hope you can accept those recommendations; the aim is to have a joint report, you sign and I sign it, so that we have agreed commitment.