By Tina Amanda
A Business Expert based in Rivers State, Sir Mike Elechi, says Nigeria is the only country not planning on how to recover the state of its economy, after the ravage done by the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses and services.
In an interview with our correspondent, Elechi, who is the President of Port Harcourt Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (PHCCIMA), said business owners have entered into depreciation due to losses incurred during COVID-19 and there are no stimuli being presented to recover back the economy.
He expressed concern that government is just interested in electioneering processes, neglecting the spike rise of diesel which has greatly affected and tripled the cost of production.
“The chamber of commerce is not isolated to what is happening in the nation, yes I commend the country for being proactive during the COVID era, they were able to intervene immediately to curtail the spread of COVID, but that was the end of the story.
“Every place in the world is trying to catch up with the losses in the economy during the COVID period. Nigeria is the only country not planning towards how to recover because other countries have stimuli that they presented to the economy of their respective nation’s and their businessmen made some input that sewage what has happened, only in Nigeria that such did not happen.
“As businessmen, we have entered into depreciation the price of everything has tripled, there is no power, breakdown on all the electricity supply in Nigeria, high cost in diesel price, it is worst now than the COVID period and there is no hope that things will normalize soonest I doubt it.
“What we are facing now is an election nobody is talking anything about the economy and things are going very bad, the country actually needs planning because the way we are going, we are heading downwards”.
Elechi further urged all entrepreneurs in the state to aim and earn foreign exchange by joining the ongoing PHCCIMA training on export packaging of local goods and services, in order to break the monopoly of just crude oil export in the country.
“Before now we operated as a mono-economy country by exporting only Oil, the emphasis now is in non-oil export, we are working with Nigeria Export Promotion Council. Non-oil export which is being done by SME companies is our focus and the non-oil export will start within the African sub-region the new trade route which Nigeria signed in 2019 and we are now operating.
“And for anyone to export packaging is very important, we have had lots of seminars in PHCCIMA with WEMA Bank, Nigeria Export Promotion Council, First Bank on how people can get prepared for export and that is why we are here, it’s the basis of my administration. How to prepare SMEs such as our local garri, floor’s many others for export.
“If goods are not packaged or made presentable it won’t have export value. First of all having training on the packaging is very important for it to be of standard”.
He, however, assured the public that the long-expected International Trade Fair which have been put on hold due to the COVID-19 outbreak would be coming up this year on 6 December.
