The Head of Trade and Economics Section of the EU Delegation, Mr. Filippo Amato, has said Nigeria needs to depend less on revenue from exporting oil and gas products.
In an interview with Daily Trust, Mr. Amato said the Nigerian economy has not changed much over the past five years, and that effort need to made towards diversifying the country's export base.
"It is not a mystery that Nigeria's economy follows the trend of the international crude oil market. In this respect, I have not seen much change in the Nigerian economy over the last five years. Nigeria still needs to continue efforts to integrate its market to international value chains, to boost its manufacturing sector, to diversify its export base, and to diversify its government sources of revenue.
"To summarize, it still needs to become less dependent on oil and gas. In my view, it is essential that Nigeria realizes how important international trade and international trade agreements are to achieve this result," he said.
Mr. Amata added that it was "unacceptable" that Nigeria's non-oil exports which included cocoa, leather, shrimps and prawns represented only five per cent of the 40 per cent export to the EU.
He also noted that though the trade volume had substantially increased over the past couple of years, with an amount of about 26 billion euros in 2017, and 34.4 billion euros last year, there is room for much improvement.
