Abuja Chamber partners Czech Republic to raise $80m trade volume

Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) is partnering Czech Republic to promote trade and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Nigeria, which currently stands at $80 million.

The president of the ACCI, Tony Ejinkeonye, said this in Abuja at a meeting of the Czech Republic Trade Mission to Nigeria.

Ejinkeonye said the ACCI organised the meeting to intensify the existing cooperation between Nigeria and Czech Republic on areas of trade and FDI, saying, “We call today’s meeting a business-to-business meeting. The meeting between Nigeria and Czech is to promote the trade, FDI and economy.

“The idea is to focus on foreign trade by trying to have strategic partnership and alliance with foreign countries. So, a lot of time, we visited many countries. Czech is one of the countries that we reached out our hands of fellowship to so that we can know how far we can go with them on business.”

Ejinkeonye said the ACCI had key into the Federal Government’s policy aimed at using non-oil sectors to diversify economy, noting, “President Muhammadu Buhari has emphasised that non-oil sector should be the emphasis. So, the ACCI has key into the policy of government.

“If you have noticed, you will see that virtually all the companies from Czech Republic that came today are non oil sectors. These sectors agriculture, mining, Information Communication Technology (ICT) and several others.”

The head of Czech delegation, Jiri Hansi, said he led a team of Czech business group on a trade mission to Nigeria to intensify the existing trade and investment cooperation.

Hansi said Czech Republic wanted to use Nigeria as a gateway to do business in its neighbouring countries in Africa, saying the business group came to Nigeria to see how it could export products such as engineering, solar energy machines, chemical, pharmaceutical products, and what it could import as well.