By Providence Obuh

 The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) has lamented the high cost of doing business in the country calling on exporters to leverage on available ICT to increase sales and generate revenue. Executive Director/CEO NEPC, Mr. Olusegun Awolowo, who gave this advise while reacting to a recent report from the World Bank listing of Nigeria as one of the countries of the world with the highest cost of doing business stated that the application of manual processes has been responsible for this.

He said this at a workshop on “Appropriate ICT Tools For Export,”calling exporters to embrace standardised and streamlined processes of doing business. Awolowo who was represented by Head, Information and Trade, Mrs. Francisca Odega, said that the need to find alternatives to shorten the manual processes cannot be over-emphasised as the situation presents a serious impediment to trade, explained that it is an attempt to address this challenge that the council put together the workshop to expose the Nigerian Exporters to a number of tested and trusted online tools.

“Theses tools are readily available to make the export business easy and in most cases the services are without any additional cost to exporters,” he said. Describing the exporters as entrepreneurs, he advised that they consider the prospect of increasing sales and revenue through the use of ICT tools to internationalize trade, generate export offers through the strategic display of products at key nodes on the internet.

He said that Nigeria can join the league of oil producing countries who no longer depend on oil as source of revenues, example of which are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, among others, saying, “At the national level, it is necessary for Nigeria to diversify its export earnings and move away from its  over-dependence on oil as the only source of foreign exchange revenue.

Meanwhile, he pointed out that the workshop is part of the council’s effort as a lead agency with the responsibility of developing and promoting non-oil export and tailored with the purpose of sensitising the exporters and keeping them abreast with the latest ICT tools to enhance their competitiveness in the market place. Also speaking, ICT Consultant Mr. John Obi, said that the digital world is the new age marketing platform that in turn derives brand awareness, creates new customers and generate revenue.

In his paper titled: Leveraging on Online Marketing Tools to Enhance Visibility and Sales, Obi said, “with the right skills in applying digital strategy, it is in no small measure an appropriate tool for export.” Buttressing his point, George Oyewole, said that online is key to business growth stressing that any business operated in the country without an online presence is not yet ready for business. “If you are not online you are not doing business in today’s Nigeria, to survive in the export business, you must be online,” he said.