Auto Policy: Stakeholders Flay FG’s Deadline Extension

The Federal
Government has been urged to abandon the much agitated Automotive Policy as it had lingered for so long in the country.
Some concerned stakeholders in the maritime industry made the call in an interview with journalists in Lagos last Tuesday.
According to them, Nigeria is not yet ripe for the take-off of the policy as it had been shifted for the seventh time in less than two years since it was first mooted.
The stakeholders who were reacting to the new date of July 1, 2015, said that the incessant shift of date on the full implementation of the Auto Policy by the federal government had shown that they were not ready for deal.
They said the Policy should be scrapped totally as they described it as unsettling the economy and stunting national growth, saying that government should abandon the policy until when every necessary arrangement has been put in place.
An auto dealer, Maxi Festus Ike, said the federal government should scrap the auto policy because it is a distraction to economic growth.
According to Ike, the instability of the take-off date had led to massive job loss in the last two years, stressing that there had been no success since government came up with the policy including the payment of the 35 per cent duty in February 2014.
“When the implementation of the second phase was first moved from July 1, 2014 to January 1, 2015, the government had said that it was to enable local vehicle assembly plants, reap up production in order to meet the nation’s demand for brand new vehicles”, he said.
A stakeholder and importer of used vehicles, Andy Nnadi called on the government to come up with innovations that can strike a balance between imported and locally assembled vehicles, adding that the government had failed the masses because they had refused to carry the people along, hence the frequent shift in date.
In his reaction, a former chairman of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Tin Can Island chapter, Sir Jude Maduka maintained that the country was not yet ripe for the take off of the auto policy as they continue to shift the implementation date, and because the investors are not ready to roll out the vehicles in large number.
It will be recalled that the National Automotive Council (NAC) last week announced that the full implementation of the auto policy is now July 1, 2015, but some people are still in doubt if the new date will stand.