The Federal Government has been advised to put in place the right economic framework as well as ensure consistency in its policy formulation and implementation process for the country to attain full industrialization and overcome current challenges of mass unemployment of its citizens.
Furthermore, the government has been told to ensure that there is full complementation between the monetary and fiscal authorities and institute right administrative guidelines capable of stemming smuggling activities and also to promote standardization of manufactured products in the country.
Giving these admonitions recently was the Vice president, Industrial Global Union, Mr. Issa Aremu while speaking recently during an exclusive online media interview monitored in Lagos.
Aremu, appearing as guest discussant via an online media channel, commended Federal Government’s latest policy measures put in place by the President Mohammadu Buhari led administration, especially as it concerns textiles and automotive industries which are geared towards reviving the country’s manufacturing and industrial sectors.
According to the foremost industrialist and trade unionist, Nigeria used to be a promising industrializing country in the continent and having great potentials to lead manufacturing within ECOWAS, hence he noted that the only way to ensure sustainability of jobs was through industrialization.
The union boss lamenting the negative impacts of the COVID -19 global pandemic noting that the country had witnessed remarkable setbacks its industrialization process, pointing out that judging by available statistics overall capacity utilization in the sector had declined by about 45 to 50 percent amongst manufacturing concerns in the country, especially since the last quarter of 2019.
“You will agree with me that the entire Supply chains have collapsed now. Worldwide there has been a massive disruption. China used to be the industrial power house in which anything you want to import you get it from China, whether its manufactured goods or whether it’s electronics, and of course Japan in terms of automobiles and to some extent South Africa. Now there has been total disruptions in that supply chain”.
“I want to say now that we should move on to make sure that manufacturing value added goes up and the only way to do so is to revive the existing industries that were closed down. In fact in the 80s we were ahead of most countries in Africa with almost 25 percent manufacturing value added in this country”
He added “I think we should learn from our previous experience, and what was the miracle, consistent industrial policy, there was complementation between the monetary and fiscal authorities, exchange rate was very stable, interest rate was then virtually zero, single digit, and so manufacturers can borrow money”
“We also need to have consistent policy to tame smuggling into the country, then of course the problem of standard, don’t also forget that consumers also need to make sure they get quality products, so Nigeria Standard Organization must be in place. So it’s an entire combination of both the fiscal policy as well as monetary policies to really make sure that we revive manufacturing”.