In a bid to help revitalise
the country’s ailing manufacturing industry, the Bank of Industry (BOI) has highlighted  the challenges facing the sector and sued for their resolution.
Speaking in Lagos during a recent breakfast meeting organised by the Nigerian Danish Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, the Bank’s Managing Director, Mrs Evelyn Oputu said the challenges over some decades had led to decline in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the manufacturing sector.
Represented by the Regional Head, South Mr Balarabe Hassan, she explained that decline had also led to near collapse of critical social and economic infrastructure deficit in the country.
“Decline to manufacturing sector GDP over decades are near collapse of critical social and economic infrastructure, current level of infrastructure deficit in the country is perhaps the major constraints towards achieving the natural vision of becoming one of the 20 largest economies by 2020”, she said.
Oputu who spoke on the topic “Optimising Capacity Utilisation in the Manufacturing Industry in Nigeria said another challenge was the dearth of long term inevitable fund in deposit money banks for manufacturing activities, high bank lending rates, which are “great disincentives to new investments and killer of the existing one like Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs).
She noted that government’s inconsistent policies, massive influx of cheaper substandard goods and dumping of all kinds of imported goods among others are plaguing the industry.
Oputu, however, stressed that BOI was helping to maximise production, engender change over time, improve working practices and reduction of manual work as well as identify areas for continuous improvement.
“Optimising capacity utilisation is about continual practice improvement and is a key aspect of performance management which seeks to provide solution that will visualise, monitor and analyse capacity utilisation in real time,” she said.