China's national trade promotion system helped stabilize the country's foreign trade and investment portfolio in 2025, according to delegates at Tuesday's National Meeting on Trade Promotion and the sixth session of the sixth National Committee of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).
The trade promotion system helped boost the nation's foreign trade and optimized the environment for Chinese foreign investment, according to delegates.
Facing a complex international trade landscape in 2025, the national trade promotion system helped enterprises expand markets, strengthen momentum, and improve the business environment, achieving relatively fast growth in foreign trade.
"The 'Thousand Groups Going Abroad' initiative has been highly effective. Throughout the year, we organized 2,144 delegations to visit 92 countries and regions for field research and business talks, vigorously promoting companies' global market expansion and industrial layout. We issued over 8.413 million certificates of origin, an increase of 18.94 percent compared to the previous year," Ren Hongbin, chairman of the CCPIT, said at the meeting in Beijing.
"We held over 830 symposiums for foreign-invested enterprises, with more than 6,500 such companies participating. We collected 1,022 items of feedback and requests from foreign-invested enterprises and facilitated the resolution or provided direct responses to 741 items," Ren said.
CCPIT said the world economy is expected to grow at a moderate pace in 2026 and said efforts to stabilize foreign trade will be intensified, while the service and guarantee system for foreign investment will be improved. High-standard opening up will be pursued to deepen convergence of interests with all countries and create a new landscape of win-win cooperation, the council said.
Chinese foreign trade, investment stabilized in 2025: officials
The Nigerian government's efforts to drive up non-oil exports appear to be yielding positive results as fresh data shows that the country's non-oil exports rose to a historic high of 6.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, representing an 11.5 percent increase year on year.
For decades, oil exports have been the main driver of the Nigerian economy. The government has invested heavily to diversify the economy and prop up the country's non-oil exports.
The country's export promotion authority, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council ( NEPC), says the record 6.1-billion-dollar non-oil exports in 2025 is a clear indication that the government's diversification drive is working.
"In volume terms, total non-oil exports stood at 8.02 million metric tons, reflecting a 10 percent increase compared to 7.2 million metric tons recorded the previous year. This growth in both value and volume demonstrates improved export activities across multiple value chains and market destinations," said Nonye Ayeni, the executive director of the NEPC.
According to the NEPC, Nigeria exported a total of 281 non-oil products across 120 countries in 2025. The products cut across agriculture, manufacturing and solid minerals.
Leading the pack are products like Cocoa, Urea, Cashew nuts, Sesame seeds, aluminum ingots, copper and rubber, among others and much more. Many have welcomed the development.
"I think this growth was activated largely by the addition of agricultural commodities to our export regime. Products such as cocoa, sesame seeds, soybeans, and then improved processing of these commodities also added to the value chain," said Julius Ogar, an Agro-entrepreneur.
"We have to understand that this is a great significant push for Nigeria, saying that we are also moving away significantly from oil exports which has remained for a long time the most significant of our revenue source. So I would say that from a macroeconomic point of view, this is good news," said Femi Oladele, a policy analyst.
"It's worth celebrating but it also calls for, it calls significantly for deep thinking to see how we are going to make greater progress. Is this the best that we can do?" he added.
With Nigeria's foreign exchange (FX) market under strain for much of the past year, non-oil exports are increasingly being framed as part of the solution. The logic is simple: more exports, more dollar inflows ease pressure on the country's currency naira.
"If you see over the last few months, the rate has been quite stable. And so I believe that, yes, the export of our goods and services have contributed to balancing our FX situation in Nigeria. And I believe that we can do more. I believe because I understand that even when we look at the services that we have been rendering, especially many people here in Nigeria rendering services abroad, I would say that we have not even scratched the surface. And so I believe that there is a lot that we can do to still contribute more to our FX position. But yes, this figure is good and it contributes significantly to easing of the pressure on our FX demand," said Oladele.
But while goods volumes are rising, Nigeria still exports mostly raw or lightly processed goods, limiting its earnings and competitiveness. It's something many say has to change.
Authorities are hoping to consolidate on the figure and significantly drive-up non-oil export even further. The Nigerian Export Promotion Council has stated that it is collaborating with other government agencies to formalize and integrate informal trade into official channels. A significant volume of exports currently occurs through informal channels and remains unrecorded in official statistics.
Nigeria's non-oil exports surge to record high of 6.1 bln dollars in 2025
