Business
Retooling, Major Setback To Textile Industry –NTMA
The Nigeria Textile Manufacturing Association (NTMA) has said that one of the major causes of the near collapse of Nigeria’s textile sub-sector is its failure to retool at a time it was crucial to do so.
Mr. Jaiyeola Olarewaju, the director general of the association said this failure made existing textile firms in Nigeria to produce with obsolete machines. Jaiyeola said there was also the problem of infrastructure which contributes majorly to the extinction of firms, especially as a deluge of competitive fabrics kept flooding the shores of the country.
He said as at today, that quality of fabrics produced in Nigeria could match the ones brought in from overseas, if only the local operating environment could be made a little bit friendly for textile companies.
“The Standard Organisation of Nigerian (SON) is there to ensure that Nigeria produced fabrics meet the required standard. The only advantage that foreign textile firms enjoy is pricing probably because they have a favourable environment to produce in”, Olarewaju said.
He said as a matter of fact, that some of the substandard fabrics coming into the country do not follow the normal routes.
According to him, policy inconsistency also negatively impacted on the sector, particularly the Export Enhancement Grant.
“When the Export Enhance Grant (EEG) was introduced, the government promised that it would subsist the life of the regime. Many of our members installed new machines to leverage on it, but under two years, the scheme was suspended and that is barely before they started production”, Jaiyeola said. According to him by the time a distorted EEG scheme came on stream two years after, many of the manufacturing companies had sort back the machinery they earlier acquired in anticipation.
On after policy consistency also, he cited the textile revival fund as an example saying three years of its inauguration, nothing tangible has come out of it; even after the operator received symbolic cheques.
He also criticized the government for unpatriotism, saying the government from time to time awards contracts on textiles, but does not bother where the materials are sourced from.