The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment,
Mr. Olusegun Aganga, has reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to the
growth and development of local industries by placing emphasis on local
patronage as the key enabler of growth of the manufacturing sector.
This, according to a statement, signed by the
Senior Special Assistant to the Minister on Corporate Communications, Mrs. Yemi
Kolapo, is contrary to the interpretation given to the minister’s absence at
the Senate hearing on patronage of locally-made products and services on
Monday.
The statement said Aganga had, since his
assumption of duty in the ministry, pursued policies and programmes directed
specifically at growing the economy through industrialisation and backward
integration with passionate support for local industries.
It said, “The Local Patronage Bill, when passed
into law, will go a long way to protect Nigerian manufacturers, boost capacity
utilisation of local industries, increase the productivity and export of
made-in-Nigeria goods, create jobs, generate wealth and save foreign exchange
for the country.
“It is in this regard that the passage of the
Local Patronage Bill, which has passed the second reading at the Senate,
becomes very important to the ministry, considering the efforts by the ministry
to create enough market for local industries to thrive. The ministry’s low
quality representation at the hearing, as observed by the Senate, was due to a
communication gap, which is highly regretted.”
To fast-track the re-orientation of the citizens
towards the patronage of made-in-Nigeria products and also showcase the
potential of the country’s local industries, Kolapo said the ministry, through
one of its parastatals, the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of
Nigeria, was already working with the private sector to implement its
grass roots-based One LGA, One-Product initiative.
This, according to her, is to serve as a
complementary bottom-up multi-stakeholders development and investment platform
for the creation of jobs and generation of wealth in the 774 Local Government
Areas in the country, in addition to galvanising and harnessing the potential
of the informal sector of the economy.
Aganga was quoted as saying, “Local patronage is,
in fact, one of the enablers of the Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan, which
the ministry recently kicked off. The lack of patronage of products produced
locally is one of the reasons for the low capacity utilization and contribution
to Gross Domestic Product.