Few years after the Nigeria automotive policy was instituted by the former President Goodluck Jonathan administration to aid the ailing nation’s automobile sector; the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has knocked the policy, it argued that it needs to be reviewed.
The association has said that policy needs to be reviewed to enable the country move from the importation of Semi Knock Down (SKD) to Completely Knock Down (CKD).
The president of the association, Engineer Mansur Ahmed said this last week in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos.
He explained that it is the automotive policy that defines the stages and how duties should be paid on the imports, adding that in reviewing the policy there is need for the country to first look at all the things that were supposed to be achieved through the policy.
Engr Mansur asked if the conditions needed for the auto policy to work properly have been met.
He told our correspondent that: “I think in all honesty, if there is need to review we must first of all look at the things we intend to achieve with the policy, there is no policy that cannot be reviewed over time. The question is have we done everything that should make the policy work, if we have not done that then the policy is not the problem it is the implementation”
“Maybe we have not done what needs to be done on the policy. In principle policy need to be dynamic, it needs to be subjected to review over time, from time to time so that it will be valid and secondly so that new circumstances are taken into consideration”
He maintained that the policy should be able to guide and enable the industry to grow consistently.
“On the issue of CKD, it is the national automotive policy which defined the various stages and provided the needed guidelines particularly the duty payment”
“The policy should guide the decision and direction; it is to enable the industry to grow in a consistent manner if you say everything must be in CKD for instance you could create problems for the sector. And I think the policy guideline is a good one. Obviously as we go along, this policy should be reviewed particularly to build more capacity to move from SKD to CKD”, he concluded.
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