Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Dr. Muda Yusuf, has appealed to the Federal Government to wear its thinking cap to tackle the many challenges threatening to cripple the country’s manufacturing sector.
In a statement made available to The Trumpet in Lagos, Yusuf said the country’s manufacturing firms are struggling with unfair competition, especially from products imported or smuggled from Asian countries.
The CPPE boss said that imported or smuggled products from Asian countries have flooded the Nigerian market,
adding that this is due to the porosity of Nigeria’s borders. He added that the goods coming from Asian countries are often much cheaper than locally made goods.
The top economist bemoaned the fact that the cost of logistics has continued to be on the upward trend driven largely by the state of the country’s roads, the limited freight capacity of the railway system and the unending crisis at the two Lagos’s two ports.
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The CPPE boss further said, “ the traffic gridlock around the Lagos ports and extortions in the logistics chain
have remained despite the government promises. “The manufacturing sector offers good prospects for job creation and lifting more Nigerians out of poverty in line with the government aspirations, but when the burden of tax becomes excessive and unbearable on the critical sector, that objective cannot be realised,” he stated.
He further stated that several manufacturers are not able to import vital raw materials because of forex scarcity,
a situation which is severely inhibiting their production and productivity.
Many are forced to source forex from the parallel market at exorbitant rates. Many of our manufacturers are yet to recover from the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent recession the country went into,” he stressed.
The expert appealed to the government to halt its planned taxes on the sector, adding that the local manufacturing firms were grappling with so many challenges that could force most of them to shut down.
