Manufacturers Beg CBN For Long-Term Single-Digit Interest Loans

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to mobilise commercial banks in the country to grant its members long-term single-digit interest loans.

The group also appealed to the central bank to prioritise foreign exchange (FX) allocation to manufacturers and reduce the number of Bureau De Change (BDCs) into large and well-established operators ahead of expected challenges facing the sector this year.

The Director General of the organisation, Mr Segun Ajayi-Kadir, in a statement on Thursday, said, “Nigeria should encourage inflow of foreign direct investments into pre-determined and domestic production-enhancing businesses.”

“We should intentionally guide Diaspora remittances into non-oil sectors, especially manufacturing, to aid foreign exchange inflows and curb rising inflation.

“The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should intensify its collaboration with the fiscal authority; Federal Ministry of Finance and by extension the Tariff Technical Committee (TTC).

“This is for proper policy alignment on the appropriate HS Codes for items that Nigeria has sufficient capacity to discourage importation and save scarce foreign exchange.

“The apex bank should allow foreign exchange access for the importation of vital industrial inputs that are currently not available locally and subject them to backward integration policy that gives priority to a predictable sunset clause.

“MAN offers to be part of a monitoring and evaluation team to ensure that the government gets value for incentives offered to achieve this objective,” he added.

Mr Ajayi-Kadir also urged the CBN to develop a sustainable framework to channel credit interventions into the manufacturing sector, outside the direct intervention.

“Additionally, it should mobilise commercial banks to intentionally provide long-term single-digit interest loans to the manufacturing sector to fast-track the actualisation of a one trillion dollar economy.”

Mr Ajayi-Kadir also stressed that all measures must be maintained to boost liquidity level and degree of transparency in the official foreign exchange window even as the backlog of $7 billion foreign exchange obligations was being cleared.

He said Nigeria should manage the floating exchange rate system within an acceptable lower and upper bound, pending the actualisation of a net-exporting economy aspiration.