The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, on Thursday said President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to China next week will focus more on power, infrastructure, transport, road and agriculture.
Onyeama, while speaking to newsmen on the proposed visit by the President, said it would also be used to promote Nigeria-China relations and how to improve on export produces to china.
He said Buhari was the first Nigerian president to be invited by China, an outcome of the China-Africa Summit held in 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The minister said the President would be going with a delegation comprising the Ministers of Transportation, Power Works and Housing, Trade, Industry and Investment.
Onyeama said: “The visit is very important to Mr. President because one of the main priorities of this government is to address the challenges in power, infrastructure, transport, road and agriculture.
“He will want to take that up with the Chinese to look at the possibility of more investment opportunities between both countries.”
The minister said Nigeria would also utilise the visit to open up markets for Nigerian products in China.
According to Onyeama, China is the second largest economy in the world and has become a major trading partner with Africa, particularly Nigeria.
He said the visit would be a win-win for both countries, adding that Nigeria would seek new opportunities and identify new areas of possible cooperation with China.
He said: “China is also an important country and a big country, a big market for Nigeria, we must also knock out this mind et of what we can get from China.
“China is where you have 1.3 billion people and we are looking at how to promote our export.
“We want to develop our manufacturing sector so we need to start engaging with them and looking at how we can have a trade balance with them.
“I think we are importing much more from China than what we are exporting to them and we have to start looking at what we can export to them.
“We also need to aggressively engage them to encourage them to import more things from Nigeria, not just agriculture produces alone but other areas as well.”
Onyeama said Buhari would discuss the possibility of bringing down the five per cent tariff charged on agricultural products exported to china.
He said: “We will also see how to increase the quantity of petroleum products they buy from us.
“We should also be looking at standardisation agreement of what they export to us to have a common standard.”
Onyeama said Nigeria will also use the visit to key into the $60 billion fund that would be made available to African countries by China in the next three years.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that China’s President Xi Jinping made the pledge of financial assistance to Africa development drive at the Forum for China-Africa Summit held in December in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Onyeama said: “We are also looking at how Nigeria can key into that fund and, of course, we have some ongoing projects, some of the mono-rail projects mass transit in Lagos and Abuja-Kaduna railway projects.”
NAN.
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