The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has said more than 200 factories and various industries have been shut down due to unfavourable Government policies, especially the restriction of 41 Items from accessing foreign exchange by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
This is even as the association has pledged its total support for the Nigerian Shippers’ Council on the development of Inland Container Depots (ICD) across six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.
Speaking during a courtesy call to the Nigerian Shippers Council headquarters in Apapa on Friday, Director General of MAN, Mr Segun Ajayi Kadiri appealed to the Federal government to review the restriction placed on the 41 items.
He noted that there are actually more than 681 tariff lines in the 41 items and 95 of them are raw materials that are not locally available to manufacturers.
Kadiri argued that denying the manufacturing industry their needed material to produce did not make sense; he added that it was an error on the part of the government that needs to be corrected urgently. He maintained that raw materials should be imported especially as they are not locally available In Nigeria.
He said "MAN is in the forefront of championing a resource based industrialization strategy. We also want to source our raw materials locally because we know the foreign exchange is not there and the ports are not efficient yet"
"We are engaging the CBN and the Presidency but something urgently needs to be done.
"The effort of the Customs has not succeeded, engagement has to stop at some point and we begin to see action"
"The port is one area where we have not been competitive and this is why many people would prefer to go to other ports to bring in their needed raw materials and machineries"
"We need a regulator and that is why Nigerian Shippers Council becomes key, we are confident that over a short period of time, if the Executive Secretary follows through with his promises, Nigeria is going to bounce back to what we once experienced and be able to achieve desired goals" Kadiri said.
Also speaking at the meeting, leader of the MAN delegation and Chairman, Corporate Affairs and Strategic Planning, Mr. John Aluya assured that MAN is ready to collaborate with Shippers’ Council in entrenching a regulated port regime.
Aluya said that the association acknowledges Shippers Council efforts in the actualisation of inland container depots (ICD), noting that they are very essential to MAN because it would bring the cost of doing business lower to her members who operate in the hinterland.
"We want to appreciate you for this and assure you that should you need anything from us in terms of actualization of these projects, you are free to knock at our doors"
Speaking earlier, Executive Secretary of the Shippers Council, Barrister Hassan Bello briefed his visitors on recent activities of the council.
He said that the council is working towards providing Truck Transit parks, saying that the council is unhappy with the way trucks are parked indiscriminately along the highways.
“We need a place where we can monitor the movement of cargoes, a place where there are hotel, hospitals and mechanic. A business-like environment so that our infrastructure can be modern"
"All these are a sort of reforms. We have also discovered that there are times that you find out that the containers are not properly latched on the trailer. We are going to make a new policy and intimate everyone that there should be tracking companies"
“We have to change the way trucks are used. That is the reason why you see most trucks are dilapidated”
"We are working with the transport companies and we have been selling these ideas to them that there must be some changes. We have location for now at Lokoja, Onitsha, Mararaba, Jos. We have actually been given plots of land in Ogbulafor and Kogi state. We want to modernise the infrastructure, there are lots of deficit in the infrastructure in the transportation system and I think it is the work of the Shippers Council to correct that.
Discussion about this post