Finland’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Leena Pylvänäinen, has given possible reasons for the low trade figures between her country and Nigeria.
In an exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES, she noted that although there are many reasons for the figures, it is always a question of which figures are being looked at.
“If you look at simple trade in goods, the customs data, the numbers are incredibly low but they do not capture all of the trade that we do because this data does not cover trade in services and they do not cover trade that goes via third countries and a lot of our trade is actually that type of trade,” Ms Pylvänäinen said.
She, however, acknowledged that the figures could be better.
According to her, one of the reasons Finland’s trade volume with Nigeria looks small compared to some other European countries is that Finland does not buy oil or gas from Nigeria.
She argued that in the real sense of it, it is the exports from Nigeria to Finland that are quite low but on the other end, the figures are not bad.
Figures from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) confirm her claims. According to the data platform, Nigeria’s exports to Finland in the year 2021 stood at $1.07 million while the figure for exports from Finland to Nigeria stood at $47.03 million.
Products exchanged between Nigeria and Finland include Oily Seeds, Rubber, Spices, Kaolin Coated Paper, Electric Generating Sets, and Cranes amongst others.
Improving the trade figure, Ms Pylvänäinen said “is one of the key aims we have for this relationship {with Nigeria}.”
Another reason she gave is that Finland traditionally has had closer relations with countries in Eastern and Southern Africa compared to West Africa even though it first established an embassy in West Africa.
“West Africa is not as well known to Finland,” she said.
She also cited the business climate in Nigeria as one of the reasons for low trade figures.
“You have to acknowledge that this {Nigeria} is not the easiest place, especially for a small or medium-sized company from Finland,” Ms Pylvänäinen said, adding that big Finnish companies like Nokia have established in Nigeria and also employ a great number of people in Nigeria.
A PREMIUM TIMES analysis showed that Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is currently ranked 131 out of 190 economies in the world on ease of doing business, according to the latest World Bank annual ratings.
The country was ranked 170 in 2015, the number dropped to 169 in 2016; and 141 in 2017.
Despite this challenge, Ms Pylvänäinen said, the embassy in Nigeria hopes that the already established companies can start to pull the smaller ones to trade but also to establish themselves.
“One sector where we see very good development is startups and innovators. There are quite interesting contacts ongoing between the startup hubs in Finland and especially Lagos. Yes, we want to increase but also diversify in trade,” she noted.
When asked if there are plans to make doing business easy for Finnish businesses in Nigeria, she told this newspaper that it is part of an ongoing dialogue in both directions.
“I mean we have the same dialogue with the Nigerian embassy which covers Finland from Stockholm,” Ms Pylvänäinen said, adding that, “there are always issues that are easy to solve through information sharing but the problems that European companies face in Nigeria sometimes, are not in any way specific to Finnish companies. So this is very much also a discussion that goes on in the European Chamber of Commerce in Lagos and it is an ongoing part of EU-Nigeria dialogue as well.”
culled from Premium Times Nigeria
