By Temitope Ponle
Abuja – The Nigeria-Malaysia Business Council has called on the Federal Government to develop the country’s
internal market to enhance economic growth and reduce the dependence on imported goods.
The President of the Council, Mr Michael Aderohunmu, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of a reception to celebrate the 59th anniversary of Malaysia National Day on Sunday in Abuja.
Aderohunmu said there was the need for Nigeria to take advantage of its strength and “break the cycle of import orientation.
“What Nigeria has is what everybody is looking for, our population; every individual is a consumer and we are more or less an industry if we are able to develop our internal market.
“What I think Nigeria should put emphasis on is the development of its internal market; no country can develop without having a close circuit economy locally; this means we cannot continue to import.
“If this is done, we will have enough buyers, so the money will remain within and the dollar will not become a commodity.
“If we produce locally, with less need of the dollar, the dollar will remain as a foreign reserve.
“What we need now is to be dynamic, enough of negative thinking; we have to wake up and look inward.”
He added that basic functional infrastructure and enhanced coordination among institutions was needed to enhance private sector development and also promote economic development.
He further said that the Nigeria-Malaysia Business Council was aimed at fostering business relations between Nigeria and Malaysia and promoting the private sector and smal-scale businesses to enhance the economies of both countries.
He noted that both countries had developed business relations in areas such as agriculture and sought to promote value addition in the sector.
He added that “there must be enhanced private sector development so that we can work together; agriculture is a major area we are looking at.
“We are also promoting small business partnerships because we believe that is the engine of growth and we are not just promoting it in terms of talking, we are looking at packaging.
“We think that working together with Malaysia in terms of packaging our products will help the local Small and Medium-scale Enterprises and one of the ways we can promote what we have is by quality packaging.
“We are looking at that as one of our major areas.”
Aderohunmu also said that Nigeria could apply Malaysia’s experience in palm oil production to cassava production in the country.
He explained that sharing such experiences would facilitate the diversification plan of the current administration.
He said “Nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world followed by Indonesia; what Nigeria produces is about 50 million tonnes in a year, while the second largest producer is about 14 million tonnes.
“Then the largest exporter of cassava products is Thailand and produce only 13 million tonnes per year.
“I think we can borrow the same approach Malaysia applied to palm oil on cassava since we have the competitive advantage; they have the technology and are leaders in palm oil production, Nigeria can learn from that,” he said.
Malaysia is the world’s second-largest producer of palm oil after Indonesia and currently accounts for 39 per cent of world palm oil production and 44 per cent of world exports.