The Federal Government and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced they have agreed to launch a Business Council between both nations to boost bilateral trade and commerce.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief Geoffrey Onyeama, and his Saudi Arabian Counterpart, Prince Abdalla Al-Saud, on Tuesday in Abuja after a bilateral meeting in a bid to increase cooperation between the oil-rich nations.
Nigeria’s Foreign Minister stated that both countries have agreed to diversify and increase volumes of trade, and also partner on security challenges, stating that the relationship between Nigeria and Saudi Arabia will also cover OPEC activities.
“And we are also very keen to diversify; two big countries looking to increase the volume of trade between our two countries,” the Minister said.
”We already have cooperation and this is through a Joint Commission, so we are hoping to have another one,” he added
“The last one took place over six years ago, we are hoping to have another one by the end of the year so that we can identify and put in place a roadmap for future cooperation between our countries because the areas of cooperation are many.
“In the areas of security, which we discussed, we have a global challenge of terrorism and insurgency and state/non-state actors destabilising countries across the world and the need for us to address these global challenges together.
“We talked about the challenges in the West African Sub-region, North Africa and also in the Red Sea Area,” Onyeama said.
He added that both nations also talked about cooperation at the multilateral level, in the frameworks of international organisations like the United Nations and strengthening solidarity in those areas.”
Prince Abdalla Al-Saud said Saudi Arabia and Nigeria also discussed strengthening those bonds to a higher level and focused a bit on how to increase economic, cooperation, business cooperation and building the business relationships between both countries.
“Facilitating engagements between our two business communities, and this is a priority that we will focus on in the next few months.
“And as part of that, we will also focus on making sure that the joint commission meets again to pursue all of those areas that can strengthen the bonds and the opportunities.
“The People-to-People bonds and the Business-to-Business bonds are the true bedrock of relationships beyond the strong political cooperation,” he added.
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Nairametrics also reported that the Federal Government through its Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment has announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Arabian Chamber of Commerce, in a bid to boost collaboration and partnership between the 2 countries ahead of the upcoming Expo 2020 Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Minister of Trade, Adeniyi Adebayo who was represented by the Director, Legal of the Ministry, Mr Danjuma Alhassan, stated that the partnership will strengthen business relationships between Nigeria and Gulf countries.
