The two leading freight forwarding associations in the country, the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) and the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) have called for an urgent review of the 2006 automotive policy.
The two associations said this in a separate interview with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos last week.
In a chat with our correspondent in Apapa, the Vice President of ANLCA, Mr. Farinto Kayode, said that the policy needs to be reviewed even as he said that the policy has succeeded to encourage the few who managed to smuggle, because of their own selfish interest.
He explained that the policy has only ended up enriching some Nigerians at the detriment of the whole country, even as he encouraged the government to start by encouraging manufacturing of vehicle parts.
“The total automobile policy needs to be reviewed, the policy has actually succeeded in encouraging the very few who managed to force the policy down out throat; the government gullibly approved it. What the policy has succeeded in doing is not to give us made-in-Nigeria vehicles, but to enrich some Nigerians at the expense of this country. The total automobile policy needs to be cancelled , what the government needs to do is that by the time we start manufacturing parts of vehicles before we will talk of manufacturing new vehicles. What they did was to bring the old vehicles and remove the tyre and say it’s a new vehicle”, he said.
Farinto, also said that the nation is losing a lot of revenue due to the automotive policy, stressing that it has also caused increase on the rate of unemployment.
“Unfortunately, this has made Nigeria to lose money and on the other hand, the few Nigerians that are bringing in new vehicles who don’t want to pay the 70% are grudgingly paying it and it has not actually developed our automobile company”
“The few that cannot afford it, what they need to do is to go to neighbouring country and smuggle in these vehicles through unapproved routes and the multiplier effect of it is that it is causing high level of unemployment. If the government can say the newer your vehicle, the lower your duty you will see more jobs”, he stressed.
Also speaking the immediate past Apapa chapter chairman of NAGAFF, Dr. Fred Ajuzie, said the closure of land borders to importation of vehicles has increased the rate of unemployment in the country.
“We have been managing it, talking about the ban on land borders, in my own personal position it is really bad because when the land borders were opened, people get employment through there. It also helps the government’s revenue by boosting it”, he concluded.
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