Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance has made a damning revelation of how the federal government Export Grant was thoroughly abused by Nigerians in the past saying that some people got export grants for exporting stones.
She disclosed that some Nigerians in a bid to take advantage of the export grants, exported stones.
Mrs. Adeosun revealed this during a meeting with the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), in Abuja.
Her words, “On paper, why will you cancel Export Grant? The EG is set up to encourage export business.
“However, in a situation, where we do not have control, we open up doors for the kind of abuse, which are only imaginable. We have people exporting stones, describing them as high valued goods, collecting an import credit and using that to import fish.”
“We do need to look for how to support export, but we have to be very realistic in the recommendations we are coming up with”
The group had come to her asking for the Federal Government’s support in making the export business more attractive.
She explained that the Export Grant scheme was stopped by the previous administration due to unprecedented abuse and that the Buhari administration had upheld that suspension in order to undertake a critical review of the policy.