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Monday 22 February 2016

Nigeria gets anti-dumping relief from WTO to combat dumping

Some local industries may pop back to life again, as the Federal Government has secured some measures from the World Trade Organization to combat dumping. Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment (MITI), Dr.  Okechukwu  Enelamah told newsmen in Lagos that efforts are underway to revitalize local industries and discourage dumping, which has brought down lots of local production.

According to vanguard news One of my first official outings as minister was to represent Nigeria at the World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, Kenya; and discuss Nigeria’s place in the global multilateral trading system. One of the areas we addressed is dumping and I am happy that we got some relief, anti-dumping relief that we are going to use to promote local industries. Also, on one of our recent trips to the United Arab Emirates,
 I was privileged to sign, on behalf of Nigeria, an important bilateral agreement on Trade Promotion and Protection.” Influx of finished goods from Europe and Asian countries into the Nigerian market is killing the nation’s local industries and hampering its bid for industrialisation. Investigations by Financial Vanguard revealed that in the last four years alone, Standards Organisation of Nigeria, SON, destroyed substandard products worth N10 billion that found their way into the country. Top among these goods were cables, wires, tyres, tomato paste in tins and satchets; textile materials, among other household items and consumables. Fielding questions on how he would tackle the influx of substandard goods overwhelming SON and NAFDAC, the new Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment (MITI), Dr.  Okechukwu  Enelamah said that among the sectors mostly affected by dumping in the last several years is the cotton, garments and textile sector. The minister said: “We are in the era of globalisation as people like to call it, and what it means is that people are constantly trying to sell their goods, so we have a particular responsibility to ourselves to make sure that the goods that are coming here do not result to dumping. We are competing with the treasuries of the developed world where they are in effect subsidising goods that are coming into countries in the developing world and hampering industrialisation. In order to solve the problem, the Minister stated: “It is the entire ecosystem – it ranges from trade policies to ensure that there is no dumping of cotton and finished products. I know we have several government agencies that are involved in checkmating products coming into the country. SON is one of them. It is under our ministry and NAFDAC is one of them under the Ministry of Health.

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