Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele on Monday scorned advice by Lagos Chamber of Commerce, Industry (LCCI) for Federal Government to take a strategic approach to the development of Nigerian textile industry
LCCI Director General, Mr Muda Yusuf had at the weekend criticized the placement of textile on the list of items not eligible for foreign exchange,
But responding at a briefing in Abuja, Emefiele said “I wonder what Muda means when he talked about a strategic approach. In the past, the country had adopted what he called a strategic approach.
“My understanding of that is that he says to allow them to continue to import, let them continue to dump, let them continue to smuggle into the country.
“When we addressed this issue three weeks ago, I had said that at a time in this country, Nigeria had 180 textile mills.
“We had companies that will convert these ginned cotton into yearns. They are dead today. Three weeks ago when we held a meeting, there were only 15 textile companies remaining out of 180 that we used to have.
Jobs have been lost and that is why it is very important that we know that we cannot continue to be talking about the fact that there is unemployment in our country whereas we ignore an industry that used to be the largest employer of labour in Nigeria after the public sector.
“The strategic approaches have never worked. And I want anybody to quote me. It has never worked. What is the policy we are talking about? Increased duty.
“Duty on textiles is 45 per cent. I have a data here that tells me that textiles officially imported into Nigeria in 2015 are $9 million. In 2016, $6.9 million, in 2017, it is $7 million and in 2018 it is $9.7 million.
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“Is that the quantity of textile that came into Nigeria during these years? The answer is no. And yet people say they pay duty?
“My answer is no because if you paid duty, we will not be having an official record that places legal import of textile at just about $9 million. We need to confront dumpers.
“We need to confront smugglers in this country. And the sooner we do so, the better for our country. What happens? You import 10 containers of textile but pay duty on only one container and you say you want the locally produced textile to be competitive?
“And if you ask anybody about textile, there are three challenges involved just like palm oil. One is lack of funding but CBN is ready to provide cheap funding.
“Second is electricity and we say we are engaging state governments on the establishment of industrial hubs for easy provision of electricity.
“We have engaged both Kano and Kaduna state governments and Federal Government itself is looking at an arrangement where industrial clusters would be built and provided with constant electricity for the industries.
“But the biggest elephant in the room like people keep saying is smuggling. If we don’t deal with smuggling, if we don’t deal with dumpers, what we would find is that even if we provide cheap funding, even if we provide electricity, we cannot do well”, he stated.