The Southeast Kaduna Branch Chairman of MAN, Mr. Raymond Anyawu made the claim in Kaduna while briefing newsmen shortly after their 24th joint Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Kaduna.
According to him, “If government can strengthen the steel industry and strengthen Ajaokuta steel to come on board to be able to produce steel, it will help other companies that depends on steel to carry out their businesses because the development of any nation is based on steel that is why people are trying to press down our steel development in this country.
“Let the Government remove steel in list of items that cannot access Forex because it makes fabrication in the country expensive, uncompetitive to import, when they compete against your own, you cannot sell. Let government review that list, because what is happening to the Ajaokuta steel company is more of international politics.” he stressed.
He added that, “When we produce enough locally we will have enough to export, export will yield more Forex for us and when we have more Forex, and the dollar exchange will go down.”
He said, there are areas that will help the dollar go down and that is the areas where government is spending so much in Forex which is the area of petroleum, “petroleum is taking about 40 to 50 percent of our Forex expenditure as a Nation.”
“Dollar is very high; it is a very big challenge to manufacturers basically for production to optimal capacity, when producer want to produce at minimal cost and because most of our members are import dependent either in machinery or raw materials.
“Presently, N570 chasing one Dollar is worrisome, that will impact negatively on production and that is one of the issues we are facing now, high exchange rate is not helping local manufacturers, am therefore calling on the government to do something on that, they need to encourage us locally to produce more,” he said.
Source: Dailytrust
