
The Federal Ministry of Industry Trade and Investment and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have been commended for creating a platform for the public and private sector stakeholders to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the WTO and Agricultural subsidy Agreement.
This formed part of the communique issued at the end of a four – day World Trade Organisation (WTO) national workshop on the Agricultural Subsidies Agreement recently in Abuja.The communique noted as follows :
That Nigeria needs to put in place the right policies to benefit from its membership of the WTO ;
There is need to enhance our production capacity and export more value-added products;
The need for Nigeria Negotiators to be more proactive and ensure that agreements concluded at the WTO are in Nigeria’s best interest;
The need for the CBN to implement appropriate monetary and fiscal policies to enable trade to flourish in the country as well as facilitate the inflow of foreign direct investment;
The need for Market intelligence to take advantage of opportunities in trading partners ;
Request to be made to the WTO to fully fund the National Technical Assistance activities;
The need for Nigeria to adopt appropriate policies to support farmers and domestic manufacturers /producers to enhance their competiveness ;
Interventionist policies are required to enable local producers benefit more from the AfCFTA and WTO;
To constitute a technical working group on thematic issues for the purpose of fulfilling all outstanding notifications to the WTO
The need for relevant MDAs to consider co-funding National Workshops of interest to Nigeria
The need to identify dedicated officers from FMITI (NNA) and FMARD to handle WTO Agriculture notifications;
The need for Nigeria to support the reform process at the WTO on Dispute Settlement Body to activate the appellate;
Should Nigeria adopt policies to increase agricultural production it may not be necessary for it join NFDIC at the WTO.