The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that the introduction of its Trade Monitoring Portal (TRMP) has helped reduce the time of completion for the export documentation process from 2 weeks to about 30 minutes currently.
This is as the apex bank has asked Nigerian commercial banks to take advantage of their presence in other parts of Africa to support Nigerian businesses seeking to expand into new markets.
According to a report from the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), this was disclosed by the Governor of CBN, Mr Godwin Emefiele, at the Zenith Bank’s 2021 Export Seminar on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, in Lagos.
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What the CBN Governor is saying
Emefiele said the apex bank through its Trade Monitoring System (TRMS) portal was helping to reduce the time it would take to complete the export documentation process adding that faster turnaround time could help to reduce delivery time for goods destined for exports and enable businesses to expand their output.
He said: “Today, businesses can complete their NXP applications on the TRMS portal in 30 minutes relative to two years ago, where it can take as much as two weeks to complete the process.”
The CBN governor said the apex bank in collaboration with stakeholders is trying to reposition the Nigerian Commodity Exchange to facilitate greater trade for operators especially in the area of manufacturing, ICT, agriculture and financial services.
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He said that international buyers of raw and processed agricultural commodities can now enter into forward contracts with domestic suppliers on the exchange once the exchange becomes fully operational in the second half of the year.
Emefiele believes that these forward contracts would help to support improved productivity for farmers and agro-processors and also help to improve access to credit for these entities using the forward contracts as collateral.
Also, the apex bank boss has called on the commercial banks to support Nigerian businesses by providing trade facilities to those with strong potential for growth.
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He said that the CBN had moved to improve the productive capacity of businesses, which would enable them to take advantage of export opportunities in Africa.
Emefiele said, “Our intervention programmes in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, are helping to enable businesses to expand their scales of production, which is not only meeting growing domestic demand for goods but also providing goods for the export market.
In addition, we have set up a N500 billion non-oil export stimulation facility with the Nigerian Export-Import Bank. This initiative will also help to enable greater exports of processed agriculture commodities into other markets in Africa and in the global market.’’
According to him, improving the business environment in Nigeria is also vital if we are to harness the gains from the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
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What you should know
- It can be recalled that the CBN, in October 2019, introduced the electronic forms for the purpose of commercial exports (e-Form NXP) to phase out hard copy forms employed for the same purpose.
- The e-Form NXP which is expected to cover Oil and Gas and Non-Oil commercial exports is web-based and allows exporters to initiate the Form from their offices/homes to the authorised dealer bank with a charge of N5,000 as the fee per declaration for e-Form ‘NXP’ applicable.
- Similarly, all authorised dealers were advised to access the form “NXP” electronically through a Trade Monitoring System available at www.tradesystem.gov.ng.
