‘Nigeria imports N3trn worth of paper annually’

The Chartered Institute of Professional Printers of Nigeria (CIPPON) has said Nigerians import N3 trillion worth of papers annually.

The institute also said the country prints over N1.2billion books annually with a significant part of it being printed outside Nigeria.

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The President of CIPPON and Chairman in Council, Malomo Olugbemi, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abeokuta, Ogun State, during the 2nd Nigerian National Printers Conference.

Olugbemi expressed concern that a large number of printing jobs including ballot papers are done abroad to the detriment of the indigenous professional printers.

This, he said, is not due to lack of capacity of the Nigerian printers but “because people are taking advantage of outdated government policy.”

He noted that a national policy would solve significant portion of the current challenges facing the industry.

“There is an obvious distortion in the equilibrium of the printing related economy of the nation resulting in the current predicament of our ailing industry.

“The ‘ease of doing business’ in Nigeria has allowed foreigners to come unhindered to the retail level of our industry , competing with locals with support from their home countries.

“At a time of very difficult global economic challenge when all over the world localization is the new normal, local industries are being denied the opportunity to build capacity.

“Are we going to continue to be helpless and hapless? We can also talk about our major raw material, paper that the cost has tripled in the last one year and over three trillion naira worth is imported into the country annually, constituting a strain on our foreign exchange?,” he said.

Panelists, who spoke on the theme “Using regulation to revive the ailing printing industry”, called on professional printers to brace up to the 21st century challenges, arguing that the industry may go into extinction.

An expert, Gabriel Okonkwo, challenged Nigerian printers to add value to their businesses in order to take over printing jobs from the foreign printers who are greater beneficiaries of Nigerian printing jobs being taken abroad.