‘Hindrances in productive sector largely caused by policy inconsistency’

The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has stated that notwithstanding the efforts of Federal Government in addressing real sector challenges, especially as it relates to foreign exchange and export, policy inconsistency and somersaults undermine proper planning and projection in the productive sector.

The association therefore called on the Federal Government to help drive growth in the manufacturing sector, by ensuring that incentives, intervention programmes and policies are broad enough to cover all sector payers, particularly, those with linking activities.

MAN President, Mansur Ahmed, president, during the presidential media luncheon, in Lagos, stated that although the government and its agencies are making efforts to improve economic and commercial activities for businesses through the provision of intervention funds, enabling policies, among others, the efforts will have minimal impact if such efforts are restricted to specific sub-sectors or businesses.

“You will agree with me that the manufacturing sector deserves more critical attention, given the plethora of challenges that our members face in the course of production. We are expectant that with your consistent push and noticeable collaboration there would be improvement in the manufacturing landscape.

“Sometimes, incentives don’t work, if they are not all-encompassing, for example, the CBN introduced the Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) intervention for cotton growers but this has limited impact because that intervention was not really extended to manufacturers, hence the cotton was grown but there is little or no value for it,” he said.

Mansur added that the textile manufacturing, garment and apparel making sub-sector and other related sectors are closely linked and when key sectors work together that is the only way the much-anticipated improvement in the whole sector can come.

“Our hope is, we will continue to have interventions in each sub-sector reaching the various participants so that we align the links in the sector and see that each link contributes its quota, I believe if we do this even at this level we should be able to grow the sector,” he said.

Speaking on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the MAN president said the trade agreement has the potential to build Africa’s capacity to manufacture and change the narrative of the continent’s economy.

He said, so far, there has been significant progress in the implementation of the trade agreement however it is slow due to various reasons which include documentation, requirements, among other issues.

“I agree it is still slow, we need to make things a bit faster and provide an enabling environment with friendly condition to drive intra African trade, we also have to ensure all our institutions are ready through capacity enhancement like the customs as some of them may not be fully conversant with the regulations of the agreement,” he said.

Mansur added that there have been negotiations that were intended to detail the terms of the protocols and also ensure that participating countries familiarise themselves with the provisions of the agreement.

“Having signed the agreement, there are a number of protocols that should be put in place, a number of institutions have to be established across the continent, there are also processes, policies and regulations to be agreed on and implemented before trade activities can be fully implemented, this is very critical to the success of AfCFTA and also important for the countries,” he said.

Mansur said that businesses in the private sector also need time and knowledge to strategically position themselves to benefit from the trade agreement and also familiarize themselves with the provisions and conditions of the agreement, adding that Nigerian manufacturers are prepared with many of them recording improvement in terms of product competitiveness, capacity utilisation, packaging, etc.

“Another issue is that a lot of exports are going on informally, and they are not recorded; however, if we put our house in order and the sector tries to do the right things, we should be able to benefit more from the trade agreement,” he added.