Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu has solicited the cooperative efforts of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in boosting the exportation of primary products from Nigeria and Africa in general.
A statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Levinus Nwabughiogu said Kalu made the call when he visited the WTO Director-General, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in Geneva on the sidelines of the ongoing 148th assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Switzerland.
The deputy speaker who accompanied the Senate President and leader of the Nigerian delegation to the IPU assembly, Senator Godswill Akpabio to the headquarters of WTO raised concerns about a downward slope of export of primary products from Africa to other parts of the world.
In her response, Okonjo-Iweala said WTO is aware of development and is also eager to assist countries implement their respective protocols on the issue.
“At the WTO, we have been heavily promoting something we called re-globalization. We are trying to persuade supply chains of companies located outside Africa, we are trying to tell them that this is also a good place. The WTO is very much aware.
Many of the rules are built based on our rules.
“So, we have an interest in keeping in touch and making sure any country that wants to request our help to implement their protocols and so on will be able to do that. And we hope it will take off in a good way. Now, one big thing we have to watch is, we cannot all trade the same thing to each other. We are growing primary products. We are not going to trade Cocoa to Cote D’Ivoire. We can trade oil because most of them want oil but we don’t just want to trade that”, she said.
