'Locally made vehicles will not be ready by 2017', DG reveals

The director- general of

In an interview with The Leadership, he said the government's policies are preventing the launch of locally made vehicles.

"The proposed launching of the Made-in-Nigeria vehicles in 2017 is not realistic due to unfriendly government policies that encourage vehicle importation to the detriment of local production.

Nigeria’s import duty is 10 per cent for commercial vehicles and 20 per cent for cars and right now, complete knock downs are being imported at 5 per cent.

When the duty was introduced in 2005, many companies closed down. If we do not change this tariff structure, then forget about any Made-in-Nigeria vehicle because nobody will invest in the sector.

You see until now, the nation’s current policy structure encourages importation and discourages production and the NAC is trying to reverse this to what is obtainable in India and other places where it is easier to set up manufacturing plant than importing vehicles."

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He said the huge number of car imports is another deterent.

"About 50,000 new and 150,000 used vehicles are imported into the country yearly. Nigerians spend an average of N550 billion on importing passenger-cars and by the time you add trucks and other vehicles, the amount Nigerians spend on imported vehicles will be running into N600 billion annually.

Nigeria’s capacity and capability to meet a significant portion of its automotive needs has been undermined by massive wholesale, and seemingly, juicy imports. Facts about the operation capacity of Nigeria’s automotive sector in the past are well documented. The assembly and component manufacturing plants in the 1970s and 1980s peaked at over 120,000 cars, commercial vehicles, and tractors, per annum."

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