The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has renewed its appeal to<\/p>\n
the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to remove some items from the foreign
\nexchange restriction list.<\/p>\n
The President of MAN, Mr Frank Udemba, made the appeal in an interview on
\nFriday in Abuja.<\/p>\n
Udemba said that some of the 41 items in the list were essential raw
\nmaterials for many manufacturers across key sectors, and could not be
\npresently sourced locally.<\/p>\n
He said that the affected manufacturers would soon run short of stock of
\nthose inputs and be forced to shut down with the attendant social
\nimplication of massive job losses.<\/p>\n
\u201cInformation reaching me from our members is that by the end of March,
\nmany of those companies will start closing shop, leading to massive job
\nlosses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 41 items involve a lot of things such that when broken down into the
\nCustoms Harmonised Service (HS) Codes, you have a total of 680 products.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on our analysis, 95 out of the 680 products are essential
\nindustrial raw materials for our members but cannot be sourced in this
\ncountry for now,\u2019\u2019 Udemba said.<\/p>\n
He said the association had tabled its concerns before the CBN and
\nrequested for the removal of the 95 items from the list, at least for the
\ntime being.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are saying they should allocate Forex to our members to import those
\n95 items pending when local substitutes can be created for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can give us a time frame of between 18 months and two years to
\ndevelop the local product capacity for the items before including them in
\nthe list.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will give our members and other investors time to invest in backward
\nintegration projects for those raw materials.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
It would be recalled that the CBN issued a circular in June 2015 excluding
\nimporters of 41 products from accessing foreign exchange at the official
\nForex markets.<\/p>\n
The apex bank said the policy was part of measures to preserve the
\ncountry\u2019s depleting external reserves and protect local industries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has renewed its appeal to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to remove some items from the foreign exchange restriction list. The President of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n