THE Executive Director of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Ezra Yakusak, revealed that about 13 domestic export warehouses (DEW) have been approved for export operations to meet the aspiration of earning $200 billion from non-oil export in the next five years.
The DEW technical committee was drawn from the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Nigeria Agricultural Quarantine Service and the Nigerian Shippers Council.
DEW is designed to provide best practices in storage, fast-track logistic solutions and efficient documentation process, which are very important in ensuring timely delivery of exportable products to importers and complying with export orders.
Yakusak spoke, yesterday, at the presentation of letters to approved DEW operators in Abuja.
NEPC chief executive stressed that the DEW initiative is expected to significantly reduce the cost of doing business for the Micro, Small Medium Enterprises (MSME) exporting companies and serve as a one-stop transit and facility/terminal where pre-shipment inspection activities like packaging/labelling, aggregation, fumigation and pre-shipment inspection of non-oil exports designated consignments are done.
He noted: “DEW will provide a veritable platform where export-related agencies and exporters will interface, this definitely, will expedite the formulation of novel solutions to any challenges that could arise in the course of implementation.”
The NEPC boss explained that although over $375 billion in export grants were recently approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has equally written a memo to President Muhammadu Buhari for a similar approval before sending same to the National Assembly.
