The Nigerian Textile Manufacturers have decried what they described as ‘the state of poor competitiveness of the textile industry’, which they said is dying and needs urgent interventions from the federal government.
They lamented that despite efforts to revive the textile industry, the sector is still confronted with many challenges including high-cost of production that has rendered its product non-competitive; unrestrained snuggling and counterfeiting of Made-in-Nigeria textiles among others.
Addressing newsmen in Lagos on Thursday The Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association (NTMA) and Textile Workers’ Union lamented that the association which ordinarily should mark its 65th anniversary this year with celebration is sadly not doing so as the industry is at the verge of collapsing.
President of NTMA, Folorunsho Daniyan decried poor patronage in spite of the federal government of Nigeria’s Executive Order 003 of 2017.
He listed other challenges facing the industry to include: inadequate and costly electricity supply, poor infrastructure, high taxation and interest rates, high cost of diesel and LPFO as well as depreciating value of the naira.
Major factors responsible for declining export capacity according to Daniyan are loss of preferential market access in the EU and US; inconsistent implementation of Export Expansion Grant (EEG) policy, particularly a perennial backlog of EEG claims; and inconsistencies in the implementation of ECOWAS Trade Liberalizatiin Scheme (ETLS).
According to him, the state of the industry particularly in the North is made worse by the heightened insecurity that is pushing away customers of the few industries in the region and also discouraging new investments in the area.
The Association further frowned at the Nigeria Customs Service for not effectively combating smuggling as cheap smuggled textiles products largely from China and other Asian countries continue to dominate the local market with little or no access to locally produced textiles.
