SON, Benue partner on product certification for export

The Governor of Benue, Dr Sam Ortom has expressed his state government’s readiness to partner with the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) on its quality assessment programme to ensure agriculture produce from the state are certified for export.

The Governor in a statement, said certification of produce would boost their State’s export value and also help in checkmating the rejection of Nigerian export produce in the international market.

Ortom said the state is blessed with abundant natural resources that could serve as back bone for the industries and for export.

According to him, the state is ready to partner with relevant agencies of the federal government especially the SON, towards aiding value addition and to processing to achieve wealth creation and jobs for Nigerians.

He also applauded the current SON leadership for embarking on a noble initiative of building the capacity of operator of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), describing it as step in the right direction given that MSMEs are the engine of growth of any economy.

He equally urged other states of the federation as well as the federal government to key in to the standardization campaign of the SON to help achieve economic diversification.

In his response, the Acting Director-General of SON, Dr Paul Angya said the essence of the visit which began with Nasarawa was to sensitise the MSME operators on the importance and benefits of deploying standards in their production and businesses.

He said the choice of Benue state as one of the states to be visited was based on its proficiency in agriculture production.

Angya said the programme also seeks to create opportunities for interaction with the state government to solicit the necessary support in the drive for standardization of MSMEs production and business processes in the state.

“Our aim is to establish a culture of self regulation through voluntary participation in standardization which would enable the MSMEs to imbibe the standardization and quality assurance procedures in their businesses on their own volition”.