The President of Manufacturer Association of Nigeria (MAN), Otunba Francis Meshioye has itemized 13-point issues that the federal government is expected to address to support the manufacturing sector’s effort at contributing to attaining a $1 trillion economy.

Speaking at MAN’s Reporter of Year Award and Presidential Luncheon ceremony which took place recently in Lagos, Otunba Meshionye noted that there is no gain saying in the fact that manufacturing is pivotal to galvanizing and sustaining the economic growth and development of Nigeria.
He added that government needs to come to the realization that a win for the
manufacturing sector is a win for the economy and by extension a better life for the citizenry.

Meshioye asked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration to expend
cost savings from fuel subsidy removal to deploy a bouquet of production focused policies, backed with more structural measures to combat the peculiar inflationary pressures from insecurity, energy and transport cost.

The MAN boss called for overhaul of the power sector and incentive investment in renewables to boost electricity generation and promote energy-cost efficiency.

He urged government to lead by example and give priority to patronage of made -in – Nigeria products in all its purchases and for all government’s contracts and projects.
“Government should mandatorily upscale patronage of made in Nigeria products by deliberately reducing the excessive reliance of the country on imported products.

“The three – tiers of government should enforce the implementation of the Executive Order 003 in same for their ministries, departments agencies,”.
The MAN boss called on government to encourage local sourcing of raw materials, through comprehensive and integrated incentives to address the challenges of low productivity and imported inflation.
He called for the utilization of the 2024 budget to sustain effort at improving
infrastructural development, especially in strategic industrial hubs to reduce operation and logistics cost and promote competitiveness.

The MAN boss urged government to encourage sub – national governments and private investors to leverage the opportunities provided by the Electricity Act 2023 to improve energy security in Nigeria.
According to him, MAN called for all measures to boost the level of liquidity and degree of transparency in the official forex window, even as the backlog of $7 billion forex obligation is being cleared.

Meshioye called for the management of the floating exchange rate system within upper bound, pending the actualization of a net exporting economy aspiration to the manufacturers and reduce the number of Bureau De Change (BDCs) into large and well – established operators to curb their excesses and untoward operations through effective management and supervision.
The industrialist called for higher inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
into pre – determined and domestic production – enhancing businesses.

He urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to intensify it’s collaboration with the fiscal authority, federal ministry of finance and by extension the Tariff Technical Committee (TTC) for proper policy enlightenment on the appropriate HS codes for items that Nigeria has sufficient capacity to discourage importation and save scarce foreign exchange.

Meshioye said, “The apex bank should allow forex access for importation of vital industrial inputs that are currently not available locally and subject them to backward integration policy that gives priority to a predictable sunset clause.
“MAN offers to be part of a monitoring and evaluation team to ensure that government gets value for incentives offered to achieve these objectives,” he said.

The MAN boss called on CBN to develop a sustainable framework to channel
credit interventions into the manufacturing sector outside the direct intervention, adding that it should mobiliser commercial banks to intentionally provide long term single digits interest loans to the manufacturing sector to fast – track the actualization of $1 trillion dollars economy.