The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has advised export stakeholders to always seek proper registration of their products to prevent their rejection.
The Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Moji Adeyeye, gave the advice on Thursday at a one-day South-East Stakeholders’ Sensitisation on Registration and Guidelines for Export Trade held in Enugu.
Adeyeye, represented by the Director, South-East Zonal Office of the agency, Mrs Olajumoke Ojetokun, said that NAFDAC offices “are open for free counselling and guidance to help exporters get it right”.
She admonished exporters to make use of the agency’s websites to access up-to-date information in order to avoid all the barriers to export.
“This seminar is in line with the Federal Government’s policy on diversifying the economy through the non-oil export and the Presidential Enabling Business Executive Council policy initiative.
“NAFDAC as one of the key drivers of this noble initiative has stepped up its processes and procedures to ensure that all the regulated products meant for export met required standard acceptable at the national and international market.
“This is done through an improved process of registration and certification before they are exported,” Adeyeye said.
The Enugu State Coordinator of the agency, Mr Collins Ogedegbe, said there was need to check foreign rejection of export-bound products, especially by European countries.
Ogedegbe made the remark in his paper on the “Importance of Product Registration with NAFDAC to boost export trade”.
He said the programme was designed to strengthen the Federal Government’s Ease of Doing Business initiative and diversification of the non-oil export sector as well as increase local productivity and foreign exchange earnings.
He said that a synergy by exporters with NAFDAC on due registration, laboratory testing and certification would help the Federal Government achieve its target of zero-rejection of all exported products from the country.
Ogedegbe regretted that some Europe-bound exports were recently rejected due to contaminants and lack of NAFDAC registration and certification.
He listed the affected products to include ginger powder (rejected due to aflatoxin detection) and sesame seed (rejected due to salmonella contamination).
Others were palm oil (rejected due to unauthorized colour), groundnuts/cashew-nuts (rejected due to aflatoxin detection), melon seed and dried fish (rejected due to no health certificate by NAFDAC), spice mixture and grounded ogbono powder (rejected due to aflatoxin detection), amongst others.
Earlier, Mr Victor Ugwu, the Zonal Coordinator South-East of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, delivered a paper on “Boosting trade through Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development”.
One of the participants at the workshop, Mr Friday Anike, thanked NAFDAC for the enlightenment and support for exporters to succeed through “timely information and proper guidance”.
“We are grateful to the Federal Government through NAFDAC for being concerned and ensuring that we succeed, in addition to boosting the non-oil sector of the economy,” Anike said.
