Role Of Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) In Export Promotion

INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
This study seeks to examine the role of Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) in Export Promotion in Nigeria (A Case Study of Enugu Zonal Office).
Export or international marketing has to do with marketing of goods and services outside the border of the firm’s home country. It draws its justification from opportunity costs, existing in different nations and explained my theories of comparative advantage which states that a country gains from a trade where it exports products for which it has the capability of producing in abundance, both for its domestic and exports markets. Inversely, a country gains by importing products for which it does not have comparative advantage. T he implication of the theory is that exports are intended to meet commitments an imports. It then becomes important for any nation to undertake successful commercial activities aimed at boosting her exports, since the extent to which it can honor its import obligation is largely dependent on the volume and the value of its exports. In nearly all-developing economics, development is understandably tied to growth in exportation, which in turn creates jobs and raise the standard of living. This is so because, import requirements arising from development must be financed using foreign currencies. Therefore, without a diversified export base which will generate enough foreign currency, a developing it’’ feet, let alone growing. In Nigeria, this realization came the hard way since the early 70s, the country had been entirely dependent on crude oil for her foreign exchange requirements the because oil was providing more than enough to meet these needs, nobody bothered to look out for, or invest in other sources earning foreign exchange monies.
In fact, other previously viable sources, especially commodities were almost completely abandoned, hence the groundnut “pyramids” varnished from Kano, cocoa “Bush” developed wings and left the west, while palm fruits disappeared from East were left to floods. Thus, Nigeria once exporting several cash crops became a mono product exporter of crude oil only. In time, it was realized what dangers lay shed of a mono-product economy. Nigeria was even a more pathetic one because her mono product was a natural asset that is exhaustible and whose price is determined extremely. There was thus need to aggressively diversify the country’s export portfolio as fast as possible if her economy was to grow and be sustained. This led to the establishment of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council in 1976 to put in place strategies, policies and programmes that would boost Nigeria’s non oil exports. But before it could attain it’s objectives for the nation, the reality of the perils associated with a mono – product economy were with us. Crude oil while in the early 70s attained on all time high price of $40 per barrel had been enmeshed in economic policies and glutted. National planning and the implementation of development programmes became virtually impossible. It was difficult to meet up with recurrent expenditure, let alone capital project. By 1986, the devastating effects of the glut were evident on every facet of our National life as the price of crude oil tumbled to an all time low of $14 per barrel. Our economic boom had turned to economic doom. The economy had become Aramaic and something urgent needed to be done to revive it.
In 1986, the federal government further adopted a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) aimed at reviving the economy through a wide range of belt tightening measures which came with it. One of the major planks of SAP was the rapid development and promotion of non oil exports in Nigeria with a view of breaking the over dependence on a single export commodity, thereby stimulating growth in other sectors and diversifying the productive base of the economy, with emphasis on import substitution industries. The reality of that programme is the recognition of certain fundamental distortions or structural defects in the arrangement of the national economy and life. By this attempts to restructure the Nigerian economy using its distinctive strength to generate or create its own opportunities, a lot of efforts have been made between 1986 to date to touch on nearly all facets of socio-economic life in the country in other that a now economic entity may be born, giving its citizens a new lease of life to number of export agencies have been created by government to complement the efforts of the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) in this regard. As it is carried out its statutory responsibilities, the council plays several roles in the economic development of the nation. the focus of the project work is thus to find out to what extent Nigeria Export Promotion Council has helped in non oil export promotion in Nigeria.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
The Nigeria Export Promotion Council, the leading agency for export promotion in Nigeria, is not a manufacturing outfit, neither is it a commercial organization. It is a service outfit, using governments legal backing and funding to offer a wide range of free services to manufacturing and other service firms all of which aim at getting their products into the export markets, so also is other related government agencies.
The term promotion has its origin in a Latin word meaning “to move forward”. Today, it is seen as a communication undertaken to persuade others to accepts ideals, concepts or things (Eagles et al, 1975;4). Promotion is according to Zikmund et al (1986; 746) “The marketing communication process utilizing personal or non personal means to remind; inform and persuade buyers or potential buyers of the organization’s products. The purpose of marketing is, therefore, to inform buyers about the assistance of a new product or service; to remind them of the continued availability of the old ones and to persuade them to buy these products or service, on a long-term basis. The tasks facing NEPC here are; how will the intending exporters/entrepreneurs assess the foreign market, how will they know the exportable goods and the countries that requires them product standardization packages and packaging, etc? implementing these task entails the use of the following marketing promotional tools as advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity and public relations. During this is not very easy as the application of some of those tools to the activities of a non profit, non manufacturing (service) agency as NEPC could be misconstructed for example, how does such an organization talk of sales promotion? All aspect of promotion are being used in promotion of non-oil exports by the NEPC. This is what we intend to clearly bring to the fort as well as evaluate the effectiveness of their activities.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
This study is aimed at attaining the following objectives;
To examine the export promotion role of Nigeria Export Promotion Council in Promoting non – oil export in Nigeria.
To determine and assess the effectiveness of the promotional tools employed by the NEPC in carrying the activities
To examine the complementary role of other government agencies/institutions toward export promotion, e.g., Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority (NEPZA), Nigerian Export Import Bank (EEXIN), customs services, etc.
To identify loopholes, if any, in the roles played by the council in promoting non oil exports in Nigeria.
To proffer solutions and recommendations that would improve the activiti4es of the Nigeria Export Promotion Council in achieving the targets of the country’s export promotion drive.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
For the purpose of addressing the problem carefully, t he following question have been formulated:
1. What are the role of Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) in export promotion in Nigeria?
2. How far has Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) gone in its leading role of export promotion in Nigeria?
3. What, if any, are the non – oil export promotion constraints?
4. What are the solutions to these problems and the way forward for Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) in consolidating it’s achievements?

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Export promotion is a service, in Nigeria, it is still essentially a government initiative, thus it is non profit. Hence, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) and other government export related organizations are all no profit service outfits. On the other hand, there has been this long standing nation that non profit making organization are mostly inefficient. In modern times however, this notion has been disprove as even non profit organization are given targets to meet. This study thus seeks to confirm that even as a non profit service organization, Nigerian Export Promotion Council still strives to achieve it statutory responsibilities which will benefit all the stakeholders in export business in the country including the federal government, the existing and potential exporters and the general communities. It will also benefits teachers, students and researchers in the study of international marketing.

SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
Export promotion in Nigeria, like in other parts of the world is a joint responsibility. It is simultaneously developed and implemented by different organizations and firms. These include government agencies specifically, set up for that purpose, constancy firms, banks, etc. However, for the purpose of this study, the main focus shall be on the activities of the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (government agency), the nation’s lead organ for export promotion and some limited references made to other government operators, particularly where there is inter-relationship. Similarly, the activities of the Enugu Zonal Office of NEPC will be treated in detail. Other zonal offices will not be studied because the zones and headquarters play the same role nationwide. The less prominent organizations will only be mentioned in passing where necessary.
Several problems were encountered in conducting this study. Such problems includes the dearth of published works and accurate data in export promotion and development, the subject matter of the study.
Also there was the lack of both fund and time at the disposal of the researchers to enable them effectively gather all the necessary data from all possible sources. Equally inhibiting was the restrained and cautions approach by exporter sin objectively evaluating export promotion programs due to their fear of the unknown finally, some staff of NEPC interviewed were uncooperative in responding the questions and in volunteering office information. But these constraints notwithstanding, the researchers being dogged have been able to achieve a meaningful success in their study.

DEFINITION OF TERMS AS USED IN THE STUDY
EXPORT – Sending goods to another country
EXPORTERS – Individuals or firms engaged export business
EXPORTATION – The act of moving good out side one’s or firm’s home country
PROMOTION – Creation of awareness of organization
programmes to target audience.
NON-OIL EXPORT – Export of goods that are lot oil based
NON PROFIT ORGNAISATION – Establishment that do not
have in its objectives monetary gains e.g. churches, charity organization etc.
OIL GUT – Over saturation of the oil market.