China’s woven fabric, women suits, fake hairs and other goods valued at N1.4 trillion ($1.95 billion) were ferried to Nigerian ports in April, 2023 as several interventions by the government to revive the ailing local textile industry have failed.
Findings by New Telegraph revealed that only $150 million goods were exported to China from Nigeria, lead- ing to a negative trade deficit of $1.95 billion out of $2.1billion trade recorded in April between the two countries.
Top imports from China to Nigeria are synthetic filament yarn woven fabric valued at $160 million; pesticides, $84.1million; non-knit women’s suits, $81.5 million; telephones, $67.2 million and fake hair, $59 million. It was learnt that none of the textile company have started production since Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) intervention.
The apex bank had already complained that Nigeria lost over N1.65 trillion to the smuggling of textile goods annually, leading to the collapse of over 130 firms.
According to the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of the imports to Nigeria from the country were mainly from Guangdong Province, $544 million; Zhejiang Province,$452 million; Shandong Province,$242 million;
Hunan Province, $180 million and Jiangsu Province, $138 million, while Nigeria exports destinations to China were mainly to Fujian Province, $45.1 million; Beijing, $42.5 million; Zhejiang Province,$12.7 million; Guangdong Province, $10.7 million and Shanghai Province, $7.63 million. During the period, GACC noted that top imports of China from Nigeria were petroleum gas, $95.8 million; crude petroleum, $71.5 million;
niobium, tantalum, vanadium and zirconium ore, $13.5 mil- lion; zinc ore, $13.1million and raw aluminium, $12.6 million. Also, between April 2022 and April 2023, the exports from China to Nigeria increased by $409 million or 24.3 per cent from $1.69 billion to $2.1billion, while imports increased by $57.4 million or 62.3 percent from $92.1 million to $150 million.
Also, the increase in China’s year-by-year exports to Nigeria were products such as pesticides, $56 million or 199 per cent, synthetic filament yarn woven fabric, $37.9 million or 31 per cent and light synthetic cotton fabrics, $34.3 million or 1.46 per cent. It would be recalled some textile material valued at N63.6 billion ($132.51 million) were dumped into Nigerian market in 2020.
The imported materials, which include wool and woven fabrics, were shipped to the country from China. Also, the International Trade Statistic on Nigerian imports revealed $45 million wool and woven fabric were brought to the country in 2015, $29.8 million textile material in 2016, while the country took delivery of 2017, $22.12 million; 2018, $12.3 mil- lion and 2019, $23.16 million.
Worried by the influx of smuggled textile into the country, the Director General of the Nigerian Textile Employers Association of Nigeria (NTEAN), Mr Kwa- jaffa Hamma lamented that none of the moribund textile industries had been revived since 2017. It was learnt that the CBN had invested over N120 billion across the Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) value chain since the inception of its intervention programme in the industry with over 320,000 farmers financed between 2018 and 2020.
The apex bank had said that by 2020 output for seed cotton would be over 300,000 metric tonnes in oreder to enhance the production capacity of the ginneries in producing over 102,000 metric tonnes of cotton lint, which should meet and surpass the cotton lint requirement of the textile industry in the country.
However, the director general noted stakeholders in the textile and garment industries were already worried that government was putting more money into cotton production than the moribund textile industries they were supposed to revive. According to him, government’s intervention was supposed to be top-down and not bottom-top as currently implemented.
