ABSTRACT

With the world having evolved into a global village. it is a precept for a nation to be in alliance with other nation(s). One of the coherent ways to create such an alliance between or among nations is via international trade. International trade allows for the exchange of goods and services cum foster healthy relations among countries irrespective of their level of economic development. The specific objectives of the study \\·ere: to determine the so<.:iocc.:onomii..: characteristics of SMEs operators in the study area. determine the type of training and development programmes adopted by the respondents in the study area and determine the effect of training and development on employees· performance. The following hypotheses were formulated to guide the study; there is no significant relationship between foreign trade and economic growth in Nigeria, there is no significant relationship between net export and gross national product of Nigeria. The sources of data for the study were focused on the foreign trade in Nigerian economy from 1980 -2017. Time series secondary data will be used for the anal:sis. The secondary data "ill be obtained from such publications as Nigerian Bureau Statistics (NBS). Central 13ank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin. International Financial Statistics. World Bank Datasets. etc. The lindings further revealed that the unit root test confirmed one of the variable in the model was stationar) at level difference (growth rate of gdp) and others are i.e, exchange rate and export are non-stationary at level difference and indeed they are random walk, integrated of order one and it shows that the two hypothesis are not accepted and also that the f-statistics of the model was found to4.80460..J which shows that the variable an: statistically significant when compared to the f-cal and has made a reasonable impact on economic growth of Nigeria.