TRADE MISSION: NBCCI TO TAKE NIGERIAN COMPANIES TO BRAZIL

The Nigerian-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is planning to take some Nigerian private companies to Brazil to participate in a Trade Mission slated for February next year as part of effort to cement the bilateral business relationship between the two countries.

President of Nigerian-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr Emmanuel Ibru who is also an Executive Director of The Ibru Group disclosed this during a Breakfast Meeting of NBCCI at the Lagos Oriental Hotel, Lekki.

According to him, “two years ago the Chamber in conjunction with the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission had a Nigerian-Brazilian Business & Investment Forum (NBBIF) in Rio and there have been a couple of trade mission from Brazilian companies into Nigeria and we expect another one in October this year”.

He stated that the Chamber is working very closely with the Nigerian Embassy in Brazil for the Trade Mission that is coming in October. “About two years ago there was a special agreement reached between Nigeria and Brazil where the two Vice Presidents of the countries were mandated to push forward the various programmes regarding development between the two countries and we are working with all the agencies involved,” he said.

According to him, the plan of the Chamber is to learn from Brazil due to a lot of similarities between the economy of Nigeria and that of Brazil, especially, now that Nigeria is talking about diversification into other areas of the economy.

“Brazil had made a lot of tremendous strides in terms of agriculture, in terms of manufacturing, in terms of industrialization and power generation and Nigeria is in a stage where I think Brazil was in about 25years ago and we just feel that there is a lot of experience and technological know-how that we can learn from Brazil and there is a lot of potential intercontinental investment and as I said, in the various areas I had already mentioned Brazil had already gone far and I know the weather is similar, the terrain is similar, we have a lot of untapped resources which the technical know-how from Brazil can help us tap into,” he said.

The Chamber is there to promote trade between Brazil and Nigeria. The balance of trade is skewed in favour of Nigeria. I don’t know about this year’s figure but in the past Nigeria was the main exporter of oil to Brazil. Brazil was buying about 7billion dollar worth of oil from Nigeria.

Ibru, however, lamented lack of a direct air-link between Nigeria and Brazil, saying it does not help both countries in terms of tourism and business activities.

“If you look at the locations of the two countries we find out that Brazil is actually six to seven hours away but because there is no direct air-link right now, we have to go through Europe or South Africa or Dubai to get to Brazil and it takes 13 hours. It costs us a lot of money, and this doesn’t help both in terms of business and in terms of tourism, because if you notice now, Dubai is 8hrs away and people go there for holiday.