Export Financing in Nigeria: An Assessment of the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM)

Oil and non-oil exports serve as the catalytic agents that speeds up the growth and development of an open economy. Thus, the advancement of exports financing is essential for an economy that hopes for development at a fast pace. In view of this, the paper examine the implication of exports financing in the Nigerian economy with focus on the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM). NEXIM Bank came into being by Decree 38, 1991 after the institution of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the year 1986, which states the services rendered by the NEXIM Bank towards export financing and all the necessary procedures required by an exporter to go into export business. Secondary information on exports financing and NEXIM were collected by means of the library science, particularly journal publications, seminar papers and texts books. This paper identified that, financing export is essential because exports are considered as a high value business. Therefore, the success of the exports depends to a great extent on the role play by NEXIM in making funds available to finance and cater for the chain of exports activities business in processing, manufacturing, assembling and packaging the goods for exports in order to generate revenues for the growth and development of the Nigerian economy. Given the above, the paper suggested that, the management of export financing should be given free hand to perform and be empowered with more fund in order to make NEXIM perform maximally. Also, government should provide export credit guarantee and exports credit insurance to exporters particularly, non-oil export in order encourage diversification.