The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has called on the Nigerian Government to repositon the country’s economy to become the number one manufacturing hub in the African continent.
President of MAN, Francis Meshioye, who made the call recently at a forum in Lagos, stressed the need for concerted efforts to develop the right strategies that would help position the Nigeria economy to achieve the objective, nothing that manufacturing sector development is key to industrialization.
In his words, “Evidences from several parts of the world, including China, the United States, Japan, Germany, and South Korea, have shown the importance of the manufacturing sector in building a resilient economy.
“As an example, in 2021, average manufacturing output accounted for as high as 35% of Ireland’s GDP growth; 27.44% in the case of China, and 48% of Puerto Rico’s economy.
“In the United States, it accounted for more than 60% of the total exports and about 35% of the US economy’s total productivity growth.
“In Nigeria, the contribution of the manufacturing sector to the total output is not higher than 10%, with an average growth rate of approximately 2.3% over the last five quarters.
Sadly, the growth of industrialization in Nigeria remains at a very low ebb. Based on the African Development Bank (AFDB)’s industrialization index, Nigeria is yet to perform impressively.
“The UNIDO’s industrial competitive performance index has equally shown that Nigeria’s industrial sector has a low competitive capacity.”
According to the MAN boss, there is no better time than now to confront the challenge of low competitiveness and abysmal performance of this important sector.
He listed the challenges confronting the sector to include; multiple taxation, high cost of borrowing, infrastructure inadequacy, shortage of foreign exchange and poor sectoral integration of manufacturing.
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