The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has once again pleaded with the federal government to review foreign exchange policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which placed ban on 41 items from accessing the forex market.
President of the association, Jacob Frank said some of the items that were restricted from accessing the forex market could not be sourced locally.
He said, “The association has done an analysis on the banned items and we broke the 41 items into 110 and of the 110, 75 are raw materials for our members. It is this 75 items we ask the federal government to remove from the list so that our members can source foreign exchange to buy their raw materials.”
He also disclosed that about 44 of its members have closed shop due to unavailability of raw materials.
“I can say we have lost between 44 of our members. They have gone out of business because of their inability to source foreign exchange to bring in the materials,” he said.
Suggesting way forward, he said, “The way forward in respect to inaccessibility of foreign exchange for manufacturers is for government to review the 41 items that will involve the stakeholders for us at MAN.
”Such raw materials that cannot be locally available should be removed from the items.’ We want them removed so that those companies will not die,” Jacob said.
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