The Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) on Tuesday 12th, February 2019 disclosed that it has trained "dried beans farmers" and its merchants in the North East geo-political zone on export guidelines.
The training was according to the NEPC, to put an end to the rejection of Nigeria’s dried beans by countries in the European Union.
Stressing the importance of the exercise at a one-day capacity building workshop organized for farmers and dried beans merchants in Gombe, Gombe state, the Deputy Director of Product Development at NEPC, Mr Samuel Oyeyipo, disclosed that the purpose was to guide value chain operators to easily adopt the best practices in meeting European Union markets’ requirements.
He also added that the move was an additional effort by the council at reducing the incidence of rejection of beans and other agricultural products exported to Europe and other parts of the world.
It was gathered that, Nigeria’s agricultural produce exported to other parts of the world have been encountering challenges including rejection in the international markets which is being primarily; due to non-adherence to sanitary measures, poor packaging, labeling and insufficient information on the nutritional content of the products.
Delivering a welcome address, North-East Regional Coordinator of NEPC, Mr. Andy Ambikputen, emphasized that the workshop was one of the efforts being made by the council since 2015 when EU markets placed Nigeria on suspension. The suspension was due to non-conformity to EU’s requirement on the export of agricultural products including beans.
He added that the council was making efforts to achieve the zero targets for acceptance of beans at the global markets. NEPC is also making effort to ensure implementation of the appropriate risk management measures and food safety guarantee for compliance with the EU requirements.
