Ban the use of foreign products at official functions and in government offices: Nigeria’s Daily Champion -The Federal Government on Tuesday imposed a ban on the use of foreign beverages at official functions and in government offices. The ban covers tea, coffee, biscuits, fruit juices, water and soft drinks. President Umaru Yar’Adua gave the directive… Read More »
And there are even talks of becoming net exporters of rice. Story is here.
Q & A on Free Trade Zones in Africa.
The U.S. Department of Commerce just released a report titled the U.S.-African Trade Profile [pdf]. One particular paragraph jumped at me (note the italicised lines): Of the top five African destinations for U.S. products, exports to South Africa rose by 17.6 percent, to Nigeria by 47.7 percent, to Angola by 62.6 percent, to Benin by… Read More »
So, it seems that smuggling is being discussed in Nigeria these days (my research is partly on the informal trade in second-hand clothing between Benin and Nigeria so I am really interested in this). Really, when a country has this list [pdf] of prohibited items what is to be expected? The Comptroller of Customs in-charge… Read More »
Emerging Economies and the WTO Ms. Mariarosaria Iorio of the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) thinks, among other things, that the fact that the insistence of emerging economies on keeping the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) during the last Doha Round, an insistence that led to the breakdown of the round, shows that the world… Read More »
I have just added a roll of the allafrica.com feed on trade news to the blog. It is directly below Recent Comments, at the right hand side. I am also currently reading the book The Least Developed Countries and World Trade, a Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) publication. The study was prepared by Stefan de… Read More »
I just read that the federal government of Nigeria has just decided that buses and trucks imported into Nigeria must not be older than 10 and 15 years respectively. The age limit for imported cars had already been set at 8 years some years ago, and is not always being abided by – with many… Read More »
In the closing lines of a post on the Zambian copper industry I wondered whether anyone knew the details of the deals between oil companies and the Nigerian government. A news story I read in BusinessDay rekindled that interest, and a post I read at NigerianCuriosity made me decide to actually blog about it. The… Read More »
I read in BusinessDay yesterday that the investment bank arm of the United Bank of Africa Group has been asked by the federal government to source 70 billion naira through bonds of five year duration (didn’t say exactly which type of bond in the news article). The money is the Textile Development Fund that was… Read More »