The Federal Government has expressed dissatisfaction at the imbalance in trade volume between the country and China.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maitama Tuggar, said the lopsidedness was one of the issues discussed during the visit of China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, to the country on Thursday.
Naija News reported that Yi, in an address, stated that Nigeria’s role in Africa concerning the world cannot be replaced by any other nation.
In an interview with Channels TV, Tuggar disclosed that China removed export tariffs for 33 African countries. He regretted that Nigeria was not included in the list.
He explained that Nigeria’s demand to Xi Jinping through Yi was for China to remove tariffs from Nigerian’s exports.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, however, assured that the diplomatic visit yielded results, as the country secured tariffs removal from cashew nuts and shea butter exports to China.
His words: “We’re also quite concerned about the trade imbalance. The lopsidedness of it is something that we’ve addressed. And we have been pushing and we have succeeded, for instance, in the removal of tariffs for cashew nuts and shea butter being exported from Nigeria to China.
“We’re pushing further to say, look, remove tariffs for all other exports from Nigeria, because what China did on the platform for CAC, which is the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation, was to remove tariffs for the least developed countries.
“Nigeria is not considered to be a least developed country in Africa. There are about 33 of them. And we’re saying, remove all those tariffs for Nigeria so that we can address this issue of the trade imbalance. And not only that, we are also speaking for other African countries.
“We’re saying, remove. In fact, what is the big difference between 33 and 55 countries? It’s not much. Why don’t you remove it for the entire continent? So these are some of the discussions that have been ongoing.”