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nairaland.net • View topic - Nigeria Bans Importation of Leather...

Nigeria Bans Importation of Leather...

Nigeria Bans Importation of Leather...

Postby Richard Akindele » Thu Jun 01, 2006 5:28 pm

Admin's commentary:

Everything in Nigeria is always dramatic. When somebody decides on a course of action, the hammer always comes down hard, as opposed to finding a middle ground somewhere to balance things out. We lack good policy makers that understand how international trade works.

Rather than ban importation outrightly, smart nations would simply raise the excise taxes on the item in question. That way, the cost of the imported item would be high in Nigeria, giving local businesses a competitive advantage. By the same token, Nigeria would be realizing good revenue from the taxes.

Just the admin's opinion. Now here's the article...

The Federal Government says its decision to place a ban on the importation of leather products into the country has started yielding results. It adds that the policy has enabled it to identify Aba footwear cluster as having great potentials to meet world standard if effectively encouraged.

The government also expressed dismay that rather than encourage the policy by promoting Made-In-Nigeria products, Aba Shoe Makers prefer exporting their finished products to Dubai and other countries through middlemen under foreign labels and re-import them to Nigeria as foreign shoes.

In a keynote address, the Director General of Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Mrs. Modupe Adelaja, described the policy as a step in right direction. She spoke at the opening ceremony of Aba Leather and Shoe Cluster capacity building programme in Aba on Tuesday.

The government therefore noted that once their intervention programme is taken seriously by the people, the era of re-branding Nigerian products to foreign labels would be over as exporters would rather request that Nigerian products should bear labels and bolder signs for easy recognition.

Adelaja said that the report of a recent study commissioned on Aba foot-wear cluster alongside other ones like Kano leather, Nnewi automative component, Otigba ICT/knowledge based and Abeokuta/Oshogbo Tie and Dye gave an insight into what government was losing during the period the importation of such leather materials held sway.

She said that SMEDAN was able to identify skills and capacity gaps as it relates to the overall business management techniques by the operators, adding that once an enabling environment was created by both the state and federal governments, the operators in the country would be bale to compete favourably with those from the outside world.

Adelaja also stated that the report of the study showed that the need to enhance basic business management skills as well as good practice was critical in Aba shoe cluster as it is in most other SME clusters in the country, which, she said, recessitated the organisation of the capacity building.

She said the capacity building would mainly focus on such issues as business plan, preparation and implementation; elementary book-keeping; business management skill enhancement; marketing and sales improvement strategies as well as export development and international trade opportunities and e-business. According to her, the programme would effectively equip the over 120,000 operators of the Aba leather cluster with the necessary tools to enable them run and grow their businesses more effectively and profitably.

"That does not in any way suggest that we are going to ignore other areas of need as plans are underway for the public-private sector partnership arrangement where your workspace, infrastructural, financial, standardisation and market needs will be jointly addressed through the formation of a special purpose vehicle, a holding company which will coordinate your imput, government imput and that of private financiers", she said.

The SMEDAN DG who disclosed that the capacity buiding programme was being organised by her agency in collaboration with a consulting firm, Nobel and Lesley Consulting, under the supervision of Mr. Felix Amadi urged the participants to take the programme serious as it has invested heavily on it.

Also speaking, the Consultant,Mr Amadi said that the engagement of a consulting firm in the programme of implementing SMEDAN's intervention programme was expected to achieve their technical, managerial and administrative transformation such that they can access credit, enhance product quality and access global market.

He therefore urged the shoe and leather entrepreneurs to show utmost commitment to the course, adding that except that was done, the intention of making them to join their contenporaries in such shoe cluster centres of the world as shoe valley, Brazil, Guadalajara, Mexico and Marche, Italy would remain a mirage.

ThisDay reports that the capacity building programme which would last four days would attract the over 120,000 shoe entreprenuers in Aba, officials of the Abia and Imo State government's Ministry of Commerce and Industry, officials of SMEDAN among others.

Source: This Day.
Richard Akindele
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