THE Vice President, Alhaji Namadi Sambo on Tuesday, launched a new production line for Peugeot 301 at the Kaduna plant of Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN), saying it would boost the nation’s local content for the automobile industry and generate more employment opportunities in the country.
THE Vice President, Alhaji Namadi Sambo on Tuesday, launched a new production line for Peugeot 301 at the Kaduna plant of Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN), saying it would boost the nation’s local content for the automobile industry and generate more employment opportunities in the country.
Sambo, who was represented by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, said that the Federal Government’s automotive policy, which encourages the assembly of cars and other vehicles in the country, was part of the transformation agenda of the President Goodluck Jonathan to make new vehicles available in the country at cheaper rates for Nigerians.
He argued that with the new policy, the government would continue to encourage companies that are assembling vehicles in Nigeria by ensuring that they are adequately patronised, stressing that “ even the issue of increase in local content within the industry will be of utmost priority in order to encourage our local manufacturers and improve employment opportunities”.
“Today, we are full of optimism and great hope for the future of our company, the automotive industry and Nigeria.
“Today puts to lie the pessimists and skeptics as to the viability and value of the recently rolled out National Automotive Development Plan, as a component of the National Industrial Revolution Plan.
“Today reinstates the leadership of PAN Nigeria Ltd and our people in Nigeria’s automotive industry in terms of comprehensiveness, state of readiness of our infrastructure and quality of our people and our processes,” he said.
According to him, the automotive policy, which is part of the transformation agenda of the government of President Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, is the reason we are all here today. The policy has made it possible to reopen our industrial production for Peugeot vehicles after six years of inactivity, attracted the full support of our OEM Partners, Messrs. Automobile Peugeot of France and created a window of opportunities for potential employment and re-engagement of our disengaged workers and also resuscitate the businesses of the largely moribund local component manufacturers.
“We are proud to state here, today, that our automobile manufacturing plant
remains the biggest and most comprehensive auto plant, not only in Nigeria, but in West and Central Africa. Ours will be the benchmark for all incoming auto plants in Nigeria.
“We are confident the AIDP will achieve its objectives of protecting local auto plants, promote local components manufacturing, attract investments into the auto industry and create hundreds of thousands of direct jobs in the sector.
“These objectives will be realised, provided the implementation of the
AIDP remains thorough and transparent. Mine fields in the successful implementation of the policy will include lack of proper definition and certification of standards of Assembly plants, adherence to minimum standard of quality for auto products and processes, ineffective application of tariffs and control of smuggling and inordinate skills development programme. We also call on the Minister to protect the policy by enacting it into law.
“PAN, along with other bonafide assemblers, are committed to ensure the
success of the AIDP in investment to enable commencing local assembly of vehicles, training and skills development and concurrent development of the local components manufacturers and suppliers. PAN is the proud owner of the PAN learning center, one of the very few accredited automotive skills and training institutions in Nigeria.”
Besides, former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, who was guest of honour at the occasion, said that the new initiative by the management of PAN would go a long way in “providing an affordable vehicle to Nigerians”, pointing out that “we have all come to realize that our biggest market opportunities lie in converting the second hand automobile market, currently at over 80 per cent to new vehicles market”.
Gowon added: “In this regard, we will implore the Minister to fast track the arrangements on provision of affordable vehicle acquisition finance scheme as an element of the market development components; we also implore the Minister to drive the full implementation and compliance with the Patronage policy by all Federal agencies and parastatals”.
The Managing Director of PAN, Alhaji Ibrahim Boyi remarked that PAN has also, in its demonstration for its full support to the Automotive Industrial Development Programme (AIDP), designated a part (24,000sqm) of its infrastructure as the Local Components Park for the consideration of the Minister and NAC as part of the proposed Auto Cluster Parks.
Boyi added: “We are launching our production lines with the assembly
of Peugeot 301 model, amongst 2 other models that will be rolled out in the following 6-l2months, Peugeot 508 and 408, in SKD programme”.
In 2015, he explained, “we shall launch the Peugeot 301 CKD program which will offer greater opportunities for local content development, skills acquisition and technology transfer”.
“Our plant has now been modified, thanks to the expertise, skills, dedication and long years of training of our Technical teams, to simultaneously carry out SKD11, SKD1 and Completely Knock Down (CKD) operations with a capacity of 250 cars per day”.
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