The trade between Nigeria and India is worth $15 billion and has the potential to reach $40 billion.
This was disclosed by Mr V. Sharma, President of the Nigeria-India Business Council, during the launch of the council, which was inaugurated by Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo on Monday, according to NAN.
FG says NIBC will be a vehicle to further strengthen and consolidate partnerships and facilitate business actions between the business community of both countries.
What they are saying
Mr V. Sharma, President of NIBC said, “India is already doing great business with this country and will continue to import more crude and gas from the country.
“With 14 to 15 billion dollars of trade today, the potential is to reach about 40 billion dollars.
“So please see, the gap is about 25 to 26 billion dollars. It is a big opportunity.”
Nigeria’s Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, represented by Mr Olamilekan Adegbite, Minister of Mines and Steel Development who inaugurated the council, said Nigeria and India would explore new areas of doing business and cooperation to further strengthen bilateral ties between both countries.
- “NIBC will be a vehicle to further strengthen and consolidate our existing bond of friendship and also serve as a platform to coordinate and facilitate business actions between the business community of both countries.
- “Let me identify two areas in which I will want to see even further cooperation between our two countries; this relates to entrepreneurship, and vocational training.
- “India has already been able to use entrepreneurship to bring its unemployment levels down to around 7 per cent while that of Nigeria is still high at about 35 per cent.
- “Similarly, through entrepreneurship, India has been able to boost its export of goods and services to about 546 billion dollars while Nigeria is only at 70 billion dollars.
- “I feel that there is also need to put emphasis on skills acquisition and capacity building which will place large numbers of young people on the work place as well as boost the nation’s capacity, innovation and capacity as well as contribute to the economy,” Osinbajo said.
The Vice President also urged Indian investors to consider providing Nigeria with some of the medical and educational services for which Nigerians can travel to India, citing that with the scale of the demand, it is easy to say that there is business sphere for such an investment.
- “On its part, the federal government will render the necessary support to all inward investment, continue its efforts to improve the business environment and providing necessary incentives.
- “Some of the incentives includes pioneer starters, rural location incentives, export expansion scheme, gas utilisation as well as investment allowances,” the VP added.
India’s Minister of State of External Affairs, Shri V. Muraleedharan said that there are 135 Indian companies operating in Nigeria with investments worth 20 billion dollars.
- “Bilateral trade between both countries in the year 2021-22 had risen substantially over the previous year to touch 14.95 billion dollars.
- “The large and growing population of Nigeria, its talented youth, the abundance of natural resources, a democratic and business-friendly Government and very strong cultural bonds between our peoples have all fuelled the rising economic engagement between both countries.
- “But there is still great potential to enhance our economic cooperation and, with the pandemic behind us, both countries must look to vigorously make up for opportunities lost during the last two years.
- “India has always been a very reliable partner for its friends in Africa and is committed to the socio-economic development of Africa in accordance with its own development priorities”, he added.
What you should know
- Nigeria’s foreign trade rose to N13 trillion in the first quarter of 2022, increasing by 11.1% from N11.7 trillion, recorded in the previous quarter, and 65.4% higher than the N7.86 trillion recorded in Q1 2021.
- The improvement in Nigeria’s merchandise trade was due to increases in crude oil export receipts in the quarter under review.
- Specifically, Nigeria’s crude oil earnings rose by 31.66% quarter-on-quarter to N5.62 trillion in Q1 2022 as total export earnings improved by 23.13% from N5.77 trillion recorded in Q4 2021, to N7.1 trillion in Q1 2022. This was against a 0.67% decline in import bill to N5.9 trillion in the same quarter. This resulted in a N1.19 trillion positive trade balance, the first since Q2 2021.
