Taiwo Hassan 
Members of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) have raised the alarm that the inability of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to create a window to help genuine manufacturers access foreign exchange (forex) with ease is making manufacturing and steel factories to collapse in the country.
Indeed, MAN emphasised that challenges in the country’s key sectors of the economy, including that of the manufacturing sector, has made accessibility to foreign exchange for raw materials and spare parts difficult. National Chairman of Non- Metallic and Mineral Products Sectoral Group of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Sir. Afam Mallinson Ukatu, made this known to New Telegraph. According to him, many manufacturers are not able to have access to forex and this is leading to factory collapse, especially in the steel sector of the economy. Ukatu said that CBN had not done much in this area and that MAN has been advocating that the CBN create a dedicated window that can help genuine manufacturers access forex with ease.
He said: “The manufacturing and steel industry is facing lots of problems, regarding accessibility to foreign exchange to buy raw materials and spare parts. “These two important things are what keep manufacturing going or manufacturing working. If you are not able to have access to forex, in order to buy those items, you are collapsing the factories. “CBN hasn’t done much in this area. MAN has been advocating that the CBN create a window that can help genuine manufacturers access forex with ease but to no avail.” Ukatu continued: “We are appealing to the government to make an investment friendly monetary policy to prevent the total collapse of industries.
It is becoming so obvious that it has affected so much industries, basically because of the high exchange rates of which some have to go out of the way to buy from the parallel market to continue production.” Speaking further, he pointed out that many manufacturers, who collected loans, were becoming hypertensive over nonaccess to forex at the moment to stabilise their businesses and loan repayments.
In addition, the industrialist stated that inadequacy of forex was already adding to cost of production, making it to go up by 30 per cent in the country’s manufacturing sector. The National Chairman of Non-Metallic and Mineral Products Sectoral Group said: “If you have a loan running with the commercial banks, and Bank of Industry (BoI) for example, there is no way you will allow your factory to shut down, because you must service the loan facility, so you have to find a way to get your spare parts and raw materials. “But when you are not getting forex from CBN windows, definitely, you have increased your cost of production by 25 per cent to 30 per cent. So, if it is a business that has a small margin, all your projections you have done for the year would be gone.
“We are still pleading and asking government to do something to help finance raw materials and spare parts. “Furthermore, we have been advocating for unification of gas prices, in terms of paying in local currency, or pegging it at a fixed rate because it is meant to be for manufacturers. “Anytime manufacturers are getting gas at a fixed rate of ₦400 per dollar, for instance, we can plan with it, but as at today, the devaluation of naira and with dollar continuously going up, the rate of gas has increased and the Manufacturers are at the receiving end. “Therefore, there is need to have a system whereby we pay for gas consumption in naira at a fixed price and not by conversion to CBN official exchange rates.”
