The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN, has reiterated its plea to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to remove some items from the foreign exchange restriction list.
The appeal was reiterated by the president of the association, Mr. Frank Udemba during an interview in Abuja on Friday. He said that some essential raw materials for many manufacturers across major sectors in the country fall into the 41 items which has been restricted by the CBN.
Udemba stated that these materials could not be sourced for locally by the manufacturers and this would cause shutdown of such manufacturers and render employees jobless when the current supply is used up.
He further added: “Information reaching me from our members is that by the end of March, many of those companies will start closing shop, leading to massive job losses.
“The 41 items involve a lot of things such that when broken down into the Customs Harmonised Service (HS) Codes, you have a total of 680 products.
“Based on our analysis, 95 out of the 680 products are essential industrial raw materials for our members but cannot be sourced in this country for now,’’
The association President revealed that it’s plea has been forwarded to the CBN to remove 95 items from the restriction list pending the time a lasting solution which will favour both parties can be reached.
“We are saying they should allocate Forex to our members to import those 95 items pending when local substitutes can be created for them.
“They can give us a time frame of between 18 months and two years to develop the local product capacity for the items before including them in the list.
“This will give our members and other investors time to invest in backward integration projects for those raw materials.’’