The Director General, World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has intervened in Nigeria’s import restriction policy which drew the disapproval of investors in milk production and from the European Union (EU).
Okonjo-Iweala during a visit to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday said the EU wrote letter to the World Trade Organisation to complain about the milk and dairy restriction policy of Nigeria.
In 2019, the Central Bank of Nigeria announced a special intervention fund for the dairy industry and warned that it will stop allocating foreign exchange to companies that failed to begin a backward integration programme to import milk and other daily products.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, however, explained that the decision was not unilaterally made by CBN but prompted and endorsed during a meeting with major dairy importing companies.
“At that meeting, we took a decision that those who are not embracing our own backward integration programme in dairy should be restricted. It was not a unilateral decision by the CBN.
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“It is the duty of us in the monetary authority to push operators and endure those right things are done for the good of Nigeria and Nigerians.”
According to Emefiele, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has taught countries not to rely on others for the essential needs of their citizens.
“COVID-19 enabled awareness as to how countries that were dependent on others suffered. With covid, those who were supposed to be exporting food and drugs held back their goods.
“Nigeria, being a big market with so much human and material resources should be able to do something in shielding its own people by ensuring that it provided basic needs for citizens so it will not be heavily dependent upon others.”
He explained that with youth constituting 60 per cent of the country’s population and most of them unemployed, there is a need to give a chance to local industries to grow, create jobs.
While lamenting that many multinational pharmaceutical companies have closed shop in Nigeria due to inadequate infrastructure and other issues, Emefiele assured the WTO boss of Nigeria’s readiness to do business with the world.
According to him, the CBN is encouraging the establishment of manufacturing companies to produce drugs locally.
Responding, Okonjo-Iweala said the WTO was in support of the vision of Nigeria to develop its capacity in order to create jobs.
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She advised Emefiele to adopt WTO’s trade remedies to develop local capacities without resorting to trade restriction.
“The only difference I may have with you is the approach. You must learn to use WTO’s trade remedies to help Nigeria develop its own industry and capacity. I am completely with you. It is just a question of how.
“You talked about protecting our industries. WTO has what it calls trade remedies, which can help us without banning things to be able to protect our industries against dumping and cheap imports. She challenged officials to ask why pharmaceutical companies closed shop in Nigeria?” the WTO DG said.
