46
March 9, 2013
Saturday Mirror www.nationalmirroronline.net
‘There should be policies to protect local production’ Austin Asimonye is the Vice President (Western Zone) of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and Chief Executive Office, Austin Laz & Company. He spoke with select journalists on the manufacturing sector and other matters. STANLEY IHEDIGBO was there. Excerpts:
A
spite that we have signed a lot of bilateral trade agreements, we should try to have a way of couching our own policy to protect our production here.
Asimonye
s a representative of an advocacy group, what is your the plan for the economic development of the country this year? Our plan is keying into the government’s policies. The government seems to be sounding up some good drums that they want to help some industries and the manufacturing sector. If implementation of its policies is well carried out, as an advocacy group we believe it will impact more positively, particularly in the automobile sector. Recently, the government said that it is trying to evolve a loan policy where the interest rate would be zero per cent, because of what some of our members are doing. For example, Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company, the first indigenous company now making, made in Nigeria vehicles, big luxury vehicles, medium buses and cars. So that is a good one, a recommendable one on the part of the government. On the part of the manufacturers generally, I think the Bank of Industry (BOI) is making some waves as well. There is no country where an industry succeeds without good financial support. So, we believe that when financial assistance gets directly to the right target audience, which are the manufacturers, at the right interest rates it will help a great deal in making us achieve our visions and we are looking forward to a situation where the manufacturing sector will have a good percentage growth.
very great threat but unfortunately for those of us who are Nigerians, we cannot run away. We are prepared to march ahead despite the situation; it therefore means that strategies become the order of the day. I know quite alright that in some sections of the country, the economy has gone down very seriously. In my company for instance, I know that our operations, our inflow from the northern states have gone down seriously because of the insecurity in some parts of the north. Then, strategic planning should be within the areas in the southern states. How then do we increase our turnover, that is, what we are losing from some of those sectors? How do we make it up from the sectors that are more tolerable security wise? One aspect that we are looking at is strategic planning. Generally, nowhere is safe, even the South-south, but we have to keep going and praying along.
With the recent security challenge that has ravaged the country for some time, how do you think that most economic plans for the year will be achieved? It is a very serious matter but one policy I know which I operate on is that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. The issue of insecurity is a
With the influx of foreign goods, how do your members cope with market competition? The influx of foreign goods is one of the dangers Nigerian manufacturers and producers are facing, because the cost of production here is quite high. So, it is a very big problem and for majority of the goods, so many producers cannot just
survive. So, we are appealing to the relevant agencies like NAFDAC and Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) to control most of these things. A deliberate government policy should also be put in place. Fiscal policy should be put in place to discourage much of the importations of these goods and services. It is not too difficult to take a census or to sample goods that are being produced here and such goods; government should have a deliberate policy from the Ministry of Finance to cut down the tariffs while hiking the tariffs of the imported ones. That is the simplest way to discourage it and it takes some good patriotic and political will to do that. I encourage them to do that for the good of us all. I agree that the world is a global market right now, but we have to look at our position, we are a consuming nation. We must realise that there was a time when those exporting to us right now had a closed market, and they did not allow goods from outside their country to flow in. China for instance, for decades of years, did not allow goods to flow inside. They had a closed market. Now they are competing with Africa, they say Africa you can export to us and we can export to you, whereas they know that Africans are not producing. So, we that know that we are just consumers should have deliberate policies too, de-
What have you done as a group or as an individual towards the said policies to either minimise or curtail the influx of these foreign goods? MAN is just a pressure group. What we do is that we play advocacy role. This hinges on persuasion. We have to persuade the government, we have to reach out to them, make them to see facts, particularly as facts coming from the stakeholders. At times, they listen, at times they don’t. When we are talking of government, you know, we have local, state and federal. At the federal level for now, it seems the Federal Government is doing well, because I think we are enjoying its confidence and I wish to use this opportunity to commend them, because they have recognised us. They are recognising our inputs; they call us from time to time and most of our suggestions have been taken into consideration. For the various states where the chairmen of various chapters are meant to liaise with the different levels of the government, well, some of the governors listen while some don’t even know that such viable groups like MAN exist. In such places, we have real problems because our advocacies work less. In some places where they are listening to us, our thanks go to them. So we are trying our little best but it depends on the disposition of the various regimes. Have government policies in any way been favourable to your sector, if yes, how? Yes, government policies have been favourable in most cases. It is one thing to put up a policy, it is another to implement. So, on occasions where they have been kind hearted to enact good policies and implement them in terms of fiscal policies that favoured us we commend them. But the right enabling environment has not still been put in place by government, I make bold to say that, because what most manufacturing companies have been doing is operating in what we call run-in, rush-out, amidst multiple taxation, amidst the use of eminent domain by government, the use of excessive power, the use of masculine government power to oppress the people, to extort money from them through different taxes and those that put nails on the road. Every day, one form of taxation or the other will come. In these areas, government policies are a minus, so, government should do something seriously about it.