Monday, 13 September 2010 00:00 Editor

THE Director, Policy and Planning, National Automotive Council, Mr. Luqman Mamudu, has in Tokyo called on Japanese investors to establish automobile plants in Nigeria.

Mamudu made the call when he spoke on investment opportunities in the Nigerian automotive industry at the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation Delegates Programme.

Mamudu said that the Federal Government had realised that the automotive industry was critical to the country’s economic recovery as it was capable of creating huge employment opportunities.
He stated that the move was also part of government’s policy of diversifying the economy.

“We have seen the automotive industry as a critical sector that will take us out of the recession and there is every reason to support the strategy, because it has pulled the rest of the world out of recession.

“In the past and in the present times, we all know how Obama intervened in General Motors, not because it is profitable but because of its potential for employment,” a reporter of News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) covering the meeting quotes him as saying.

Mamudu explained that the Federal Government’s agenda to revive the motor industry was first to divest from the six major automobile assembly plants, in which it owns 60 per cent shares.
He stated that as part of the national reform measures to revive the industry, the government established Independent Power Projects (IPPs) to raise power generation in the country.

He noted, however, that the major constraint to industrialisation of the country was the huge power supply gap, adding that weak and deteriorating infrastructures, low patronage, high production cost and inconsistency in government policies were also contributory.

In his speech, Mr. Shinichi Donn Ikekita, the manager, Auto Parts Division of NHK Sales Company said the company was one of the world’s biggest auto parts factory.

He indicated his company’s interest to do business in Nigeria.

Source: Guardian