Stakeholders Seek Infrastructure For Ailing Textile, Garment Sub-Sector
By Lucy Ekpenyong
Stakeholders in the industrial sector have called on the Federal Government to provide infrastructure that will rejuvenate the ailing textile sub-sector.
They noted that infrastructure is urgently required for the sub-sector following the government decision to stop provision of foreign exchange for importers of textile and garments.
“It is only the masses that will suffer the hike in price, because leaders in power will go ahead and import textile materials in large quantities,” they stated.
The President of Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe said that it is only when the sector is provided with the right infrastructure that the sector would bounce back again.
Gwadabe, who was represented by the Financial Secretary of the Association, Mr. Adewumi Adewale, at the inauguration of new Exco of Commerce and Industry Correspondents Association of Nigeria (CICAN), recently in Lagos, noted that government has not put anything in place that will encourage the textile industries that are moribund to take off, saying that this cannot be a sudden affair, as it has to be a gradual issue.
He said that if the government is serious about reviving the textile industry, it will take those moribund industries three years to come back to limelight.
But in achieving this, he said there must be massive improvement on power supply because that is the major challenge being faced by the manufacturing sector.
In his speech, the Managing Director of NISPO Porcelain Company Limited, Mr. Afam Mallinson Ukatu, said Value Added Tax (VAT) increase from five percent to 10 percent would affect manufacturing sector and other businesses in the country negatively.
Ukatu noted that if government does not refrain from the proposed, most manufacturers would be forced to shut down their factories here in Nigeria and relocate to others countries where tax are more friendly.
He recounted that another area the government needed to look into was the issue of multiple taxation, stressing that it is of paramount importance to harmonise taxes.
“The situation has deteriorated to the extent that tax authorities shut down factories, for the inability of tax defaulters to pay. What we do ask them is that if you shut a factory because they have not paid tax, and all their workers are on the street, where are they going to get the money to pay the tax? Again, I will advise that government desist from the proposed increase of VAT,” he stressed.
