Ministry’s N2.72bn Capital Allocation Can’t Drive Trade – Minister

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mrs Jumoke Oduwole, has said that the paltry N2.72bn proposed for the ministry in the 2026 budget can’t drive the nation’s trade and investment agenda.

The minister dropped the hint on Monday when she appeared before the Senate Committee on Trade and Investment to defend her ministry’s 2026 budget proposal.

According to her, the amount is grossly inadequate to deliver the scale of programmes required to drive Nigeria’s industrialisation, trade expansion and investment campaign.

Oduwole appealed to the National Assembly for an increase in capital funding, stressing that without adequate resources, the ministry’s ability to support President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and the push for a trillion-dollar economy would be severely constrained.

The Ministry, she added, is central to the diversification of Nigeria’s economy away from oil and non-oil exports to stimulating domestic production and attracting both local and foreign investments.

“The proposed capital allocation of ₦2.72bn will be a stretch in meeting the full demands of our programmes and capital projects,” Oduwole told the lawmakers.

“Given the scope of our responsibilities, we respectfully seek the committee’s support for targeted enhancement of our capital allocation to enable us to effectively deliver on our mandate.”

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Trade and Investment, Senator Umar Sadiq, acknowledged the ministry’s strategic importance to the government’s economic vision, noting that achieving a trillion-dollar economy would be impossible without a strong performance from the industry, trade and investment sectors.

“We are all aware of the renewal agenda of Mr. President, which is essentially to ensure that we have a trillion-dollar economy,” Sadiq said.

“The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment is a major partner in achieving this objective outside the oil sector.”

The senator, however, emphasised that the National Assembly’s support for the ministry would be tied to transparency, accountability and measurable impact, stressing that lawmakers were more interested in outcomes than rhetoric.

Also speaking, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Industry, Senator Francis Fadahunsi, urged the ministry to clearly demonstrate the impact of its agencies on the lives of Nigerians.

He listed areas like job creation, export growth and industrial development as key to the government’s economic revival and diversification agenda.

In a presentation to the committee, Oduwole outlined the ministry’s achievements over the past two years, arguing that the results recorded so far justified increased capital support.

She disclosed that Nigeria recorded about $21bn in capital importation in the first 10 months of 2025, compared to $12bn in 2024 and less than $4bn in 2023.

The minister attributed the improvement to deliberate interventions by the ministry, including the development of over $5bn in bankable investment projects, sector-focused deal rooms and Nigeria’s first Domestic Investor Summit.

She added that the ministry had also resolved more than 50 major investor bottlenecks and undertaken over 100 bilateral investment engagements with countries like the United Kingdom, United States, United Arab Emirates, Brazil and Japan.

According to her, sustained engagements under the Nigeria–UK Economic and Trade Partnership, resulted in UK investors accounting for about 65 percent of Nigeria’s foreign capital inflows in 2025.

On trade performance, Oduwole revealed that Nigeria recorded a trade surplus in 2025, with total trade value estimated at ₦113 trillion in the first three quarters of the year, while exports grew by 11 per cent year-on-year to approximately $6.1 billion.

She described the record as the highest in the country’s history, adding that her ministry’s export facilitation measures, expansion of export warehouses, new air cargo corridors to Africa and improved implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) contributed to 14 percent growth in Nigeria’s intra-African trade.

In the industrial sector, the minister disclosed that special economic zones generated over $500m in export revenue and created more than 20,000 direct jobs in 2025.

She also highlighted the Federal Executive Council’s approval of the National Industrial Policy and Nigeria’s successful bid to host CANEX 2026 and the Intra-Africa Trade Fair in 2027.

Despite these achievements, Oduwole warned that funding constraints were already limiting the ministry’s effectiveness.

She disclosed that while personnel and overhead allocations were fully utilised in both 2024 and 2025, capital releases had been inconsistent.

She disclosed that no capital funds were released to the ministry in 2025.

The Senate committee members expressed concern that the 2026 budget proposal was largely a rollover of the 2025 budget.

They observed that the proposed 2026 budget, made little provisions for new capital initiatives, in line with federal budget guidelines.

But while acknowledging the rollover framework, the minister maintained that even within those constraints, enhanced capital funding was critical.

“Our ministry is programme-led and service-oriented. We are not a revenue-generating ministry in the conventional sense.

“We facilitate investment, solve regulatory bottlenecks, open markets for Nigerian products and support domestic investors. To do this effectively, we need capital resources,” she insisted.

Oduwole added that the ministry planned to intensify non-oil export promotion, deepen AfCFTA implementation, roll out digital investor and trade facilitation platforms, and extend trade and investment support to sub-national levels.

The drive, she said, would cut across the six geopolitical zones in 2026, an initiative she said would be difficult to execute with the current capital envelope.

The senators promised to careful study the concerns raised by the minister, as scrutiny of the 2026 budget proposal continued.

They observed the growing pressure from MDAS for adequate funding, assuring that critical economic ministries would be adequately funded to deliver growth, create jobs and diversity the economy.

Ministry’s N2.72bn Capital Allocation Can’t Drive Trade – Minister is first published on The Whistler Newspaper