The Canadian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Ambassador Chris Cooter, has described his country’s trade relations with Nigeria as mutually beneficiall, pegging the volume of trade between the two countries at $3billion.
In a media chat with LEADERSHIP crew, in his office in Abuja, Cooter said, “the volume of trade between Nigeria and Canada is about $3bn and that is trade in the official figures, which is tracked in an old fashioned way. We track basically goods. The bulk of that is purchases of oil from your country because although we are a net energy exporter, on the east side, we import oil.”
The high commissioner also advised on the need for diversification in trade between Nigeria and Canada, and said that the future was very bright for both countries’ trade relations and noted, “We need to diversify trade relationships, and we have a number of services. We sell airplanes. We are the largest producer of airplanes in the world. If you look at IT, we manufacture blackberry. We have all sorts of IT even high tech products as well. Also in education services, that is also captured in our trade statistics, sort of.
So it’s a very healthy relationship because it is diversified. So when one thing is up, the other thing is down.
“From the Nigerian side, it’s fairly heavily leaning on the oil sector but we have foundations there to do a lot more. We have a brand new Nigeria/Canada Association that was formed in December. I met with them at the inaugural meeting a few weeks ago. Looking at things we can do, for example, setting targets; do we want to set trade targets? Do we want to identify the sectors where we really want to work? Is there an obstacle here or there and do we take that angle or is it worth providing more information to Canadian investors about Nigeria?”