|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
As the Federal Government plans to replace the list of 41 items with ‘more trade policy-driven restrictions’, manufacturers have identified 191 items which they say require deliberate fiscal review.
Out of the 191 items manufacturers singled out 95 items that are essential raw materials for factories and advised government to allow them free access to foreign exchange and avoid placing restrictions on them in the on-going review.
According to manufacturers, the items are either not locally available at all at the moment, or are available in insufficient quantity.
Such items include: adhesive based on polymers, glass vials and ampoules, modified starch, which is a specific grade of starch modified with additives; iron or steel wool, intravenous infusion bags, crimp pumps and screw pumps.
Others are infusion PVC and PE bags, plastic balls and holders for production of deodorant roll-ons; digitally printed pack sleeves, polypropylene, textured yarn of polyesters, stainless steel tanks and vessels, laboratory, hygienic or pharmaceutical glassware, among others.
On the other hand, manufacturers listed 96 items that are locally available in sufficient quantity and can be produced locally, advising the government to consider them for inclusion in the new policy-driven restrictions to protect local industries.
These items include exercise books, envelopes, wines and spirits, roofing tiles, corrugated paper and paperboard (whether or not perforated), wired sheet, glass, and rough cast. Others include sulphuric acid, marble, travertine and alabaster, granite, sodium silicate, aluminium sulphate, aluminium tubes and pipes of aluminium (not alloyed), soap noodles and alum, among others.
“The Federal Government’s pronouncement is what we have been pressing for. In the 41 items, in as much as there are goods that are locally available, there are also many that are essential raw materials for manufacturers,” said Frank Udemba Jacobs, president of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) in a telephone interview with BusinessDay.
“We believe that the review of the 41 items with a view to excluding the inputs of local manufacturers will stimulate the industrial sector and boost employment,” Jacobs said.
He said the Nigerian economy would be the biggest beneficiary of the policy.
The organised private sector, especially manufacturers, have, for months, mounted an opposition to a Central Bank of Nigeria policy, which excluded 41 items from accessing foreign exchange locally.
Manufacturers claim that many of the items are essential raw materials. In a positive development, Yemi Osinbajo , Nigeria’s vice president, said in Abuja yesterday, that the Federal Government was working to replace the list of 41 items with “more trade policy-driven restrictions, taking into account, items that are required and locally unavailable raw materials”, reported Reuters.
A manufacturer in Ogun Industrial Zone, stressed the need to pay particular attention to the pharmaceutical industry, which is hard hit by foreign exchange scarcity and restriction.
Tony Anakebe, managing director of Gold-Link Investment Limited, a clearing and forwarding company, said in a telephone interview that the review of the 41-item list was long overdue, adding that many pharmaceutical shops were currently empty due to lack of foreign exchange.
“Nigerians are dying at the hospitals due to lack of essential drugs and high cost of medicines at the pharmaceutical shops. The essential drugs are out of the reach of the masses. Therefore, in reviewing the 41-items list, the Federal Government should pay more attention to delisting drugs related equipment from the list and ensure that foreign exchange is made available to importers of essential medicines and medical equipment,”Anakebe said.
On the manufacturers’ proposal that finished products that are locally manufactured should be excluded from the 41-item list, Anakebe observed that finished products such as tiles, marbles, and granite, among other,s are not essential items, when compared with drugs and other pharmaceutical related raw materials.
Lucky Amiwero, the national president of the National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), said Nigeria’s economy has been at a standstill in recent times, since the Federal Government started the implementation of the 41-item list.
“The 41-item list was wrongly packaged and it was supposed to have been the responsibility of the Federal Ministry of Finance, which is the fiscal authority, rather than the CBN, which is the monetary authority,” he observed.
Amiwero, who noted that the policy has caused lots of havoc on businesses, lamented that many small and medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) have closed shop, due to the hardship in the economy, fuelled by lack of foreign exchange to import essential raw materials needed as critical input for production.
ODINAKA ANUDU & AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
