Segun Ajayi Kadir, Director General (DG) of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), said government officials must face the consequences of implementing policies that ruin businesses.
Mr. Ajayi-Kadir was speaking on Tuesday at a forum themed “Nigeria’s Challenging Economy: Strategies for Recovery” organized by Channels Television to commemorate Nigeria’s 64th anniversary of independence.
He stressed that there must be consequences if the policy leads to an economic setback for the industry.
“There must be consequences for government officials who design policies that destroy companies,” Ajay-Qadir said.
“So you could make a policy today, it would be a disaster for the industry, the government would just change it and walk away. We don’t have that luxury in the private sector.
“If you make a mistake, your business could disappear and your assets could be under pressure. So I think the government needs to see that move as well.”
He said the challenges posed by continued interest rate increases should be alleviated.
The directorate said borrowing at interest rates of 30 to 35 percent would make it nearly impossible for businesses to survive, especially in an economy where consumer purchasing power has significantly declined.
“This should help alleviate the challenges we face with continued interest rate increases,” he said.
“We’ve been doing that for over 18 months and we haven’t done any impact assessment on the production sector.
“I think in order to inflate the economy, you need to be able to shut off that sector.”
“We need industrial policy.”
Ajay Qadir said there was a need for an industrial policy to guide the government’s approach to industrialization.
According to the Directorate, the policy promotes collaboration between key ministries such as the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“I have to say that policy coordination is very important for us, because we can’t operate in a way where we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” he said.
“It basically defines the direction we want to go in and guides our operations.”
He also questioned the effectiveness of Nigerian embassies abroad and called for key performance indicators (KPIs) aimed at facilitating the penetration of Nigerian products into overseas markets and attracting foreign investment.
While praising the efforts of Finance Minister and Economic Coordination Minister Wale Edun, Prime Minister Ajay Kadir called for more prudent government policy and appealed to the government to avoid playing politics with economic policy.
Ajay Qadir also advocated a collaborative approach with clear expectations, deliverables and accountability measures to ensure government and industry move in the same direction.
“FG should look beyond oil sales to capture FX.”
Ajayi Kadir says Nigeria does not need to rely solely on oil sales for foreign exchange (FX) and urges government to diversify its sources of income, especially by leveraging the potential of discrete remittances. I asked for it.
“Nor do we need to rely on the sale of oil to earn exchange. First, we need to realize all the revenue we get from oil, and any obstacles imposed by human, structural or system There shouldn’t be any. I mean, we need to be clear about that. It’s our natural resource,” he said.
“We need to fully recover all the foreign exchange that comes out of it. We need them to help us deal with the foreign exchange challenges we have.
“There is one issue that I still do not understand at the moment why we have not been able to overcome it and that is the unredeemed forward of 2.4 billion naira with the CBN.”
The directorate also said currency exposure caused huge losses to manufacturers.
“I think the president will need to intervene because, for example, I have a member who has lost NOK 7.2 billion due to this currency exposure through no fault of his and eight other members. We actually lost $918 billion in the past year,” he said.
Ajay Qadir said that addressing pressing issues does not require new laws or executive orders, but rather a concerted effort to resolve currency challenges.
