The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, has reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to the growth and development of local industries by placing emphasis on local patronage as the key enabler of growth of the manufacturing sector.
This, according to a statement, signed by the Senior Special Assistant to the Minister on Corporate Communications, Mrs. Yemi Kolapo, is contrary to the interpretation given to the minister’s absence at the Senate hearing on patronage of locally-made products and services on Monday.
The statement said Aganga had, since his assumption of duty in the ministry, pursued policies and programmes directed specifically at growing the economy through industrialisation and backward integration with passionate support for local industries.
It said, “The Local Patronage Bill, when passed into law, will go a long way to protect Nigerian manufacturers, boost capacity utilization of local industries, increase the productivity and export of made-in-Nigeria goods, create jobs, generate wealth and save foreign exchange for the country.
“It is in this regard that the passage of the Local Patronage Bill, which has passed the second reading at the Senate, becomes very important to the ministry, considering the efforts by the ministry to create enough market for local industries to thrive. The ministry’s low quality representation at the hearing, as observed by the Senate, was due to a communication gap, which is highly regretted.”
To fast-track the re-orientation of the citizens towards the patronage of made-in-Nigeria products and also showcase the potential of the country’s local industries, Kolapo said the ministry, through one of its parastatals, the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria, was already working with the private sector to implement its grass roots-based One LGA, One-Product initiative.
This, according to her, is to serve as a complementary bottom-up multi-stakeholders development and investment platform for the creation of jobs and generation of wealth in the 774 Local Government Areas in the country, in addition to galvanizing and harnessing the potential of the informal sector of the economy.
Aganga was quoted as saying, “Local patronage is, in fact, one of the enablers of the Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan, which the ministry recently kicked off. The lack of patronage of products produced locally is one of the reasons for the low capacity utilization and contribution to Gross Domestic Product.
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