THE Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) has commissioned an N11 million data centre to boost export promotions in the country.Specifically, it was noted that the data centre, which is aimed at digitalising the various export transactions of the council, would also help to further place Nigeria ahead of other developing economies of the world.Commissioning the data centre in Lagos at the weekend, the Executive Director, NEPC, Mr. David Adulugba said the impact of technology could be felt in various sectors of the economy, 'therefore, it is worthy to say that NEPC should not be left out in the digitalisation agenda.'Adulugba, who thanked the project consultant, Skyward Research and Consulting Ltd., for a job well done, stressed that ICT contributes significantly to economic growth.Meanwhile, he revealed that the country's exportable products generates about $10 billion yearly for the country.Adulugba, who listed the exportable resources to include, raw commodities of cashew, cocoa, sesame seeds and special leathers (finished ones) added that manufacturing products in the country were also doing well in the export market.According to him, President Goodluck Jonathan made reference to the positive contributions of the country's exportations to economic growth in the 2012 budget presented last week, stressing that the report from the International Trade Development Centre in Geneva also corroborated Nigeria's contributions to the world economy and efforts put up to become competitive in the global market.'As I am speaking to you and according to the International Trade Development Centre in Geneva, Nigeria's exportation currently hits $10 billion yearly and this has position Nigeria as one of the leading emerging economy in the world.'At NEPC, we are doubling our efforts to ensure that we double that figure by the end of this year,' he stated.Despite this, the NEPC executive director hinted that some challenges including failing infrastructure, paucity of funds to develop products, cost of production, which was very high in Nigeria, checkpoints and border harassments, sea piracy among others, were things plaguing the sector in the country.According to him, NEPC was trying as much as possible to diversify the economy, 'the oil economy is a mono base economy. Nigeria can do well without oil. The oil economy has not done well and except we make stringent effort to diversify the economy by developing the non oil sector, we may not compete well in the global economy.'On the N11 million data centre launched, Adulugba said that with the transformation brought about by Information Technology, not only in Nigeria, but globally, NEPC couldn't be allowed to left behind, 'we must go digital in export processing.'He explained that data collection, collation, storage and retrieval was a system that must be embedded in the NEPC operations.
Click here to read full news..
