Business
FG To Revive Moribund Tanneries
The Federal Government
is to revive moribund leather tanneries across the country, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr Olusegun Aganga, has said.
Addressing stakeholders in the leather sub-sector last Monday in Abuja, Aganga said the government would carry out audit of the moribund tanneries with a view to re-tooling and reviving the viable ones.
“Of the 36 tanneries in the country, only six accounts for the bulk of our export,’’ he said.
“I have directed the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria and the Industrial Training Fund, through the National Enterprise Development Programme (NEDEP), to audit tanneries in Nigeria.”
Aganga said appointed agencies would work with owners of the tanneries to re-tool and resuscitated some of them.
He said the ministry had identified some leather clusters in parts of the country to be upgraded to world-class leather clusters in the next 18 months.
The minister said the clusters identified included Kano, Kaduna and Aba.
The Kano leather cluster, according to him, is already one of the best in West Africa and sources lots of hides and skin from outside Nigeria to meet its demand.
Aganga said the government would provide the requisite infrastructure to support growth and development of the clusters.
“The Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and Small and Medium Enterprises are already working with the Kano State Government on the Kano Leather Clusters.
“We want to make the Kano Clusters, which is located in the Free Trade Zone, one of the leading leather clusters in the world.
“We will provide the requisite infrastructure for the six identified clusters like the Common Facility Centres (CFC).
“The CFC in Aba is already in place. We will complete the one in Kano as well as those in other locations.
“NEDEP is working with a number of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises to formalise their operations,” he addd.
The minister said Nigeria is one of the largest exporters of finished leather products in West Africa.
The export, he said, was done mostly through informal channels, stressing the need to formalise the process to enable government to provide incentives.
He said the Federal Government was committed to providing an enabling environment by reducing the cost of doing business for the sector to grow and become globally competitive.