From: OKEY SAMPSON, Aba
Acting president Yemi Osinbajo has said that the Federal Government was prepared to support and encourage those in the manufacturing and industry sectors in a bid to make their businesses grow well and become major competitors globally.
Osinbajo said it was in order to get first-hand information about the problems faced by industrialists and manufacturers with a view to solving them that he had been going round to meet with local manufacturers.
The acting president stated this in Aba, Abia State, during the first leg of the nationwide Micro, Small and Medium enterprise clinics for viable enterprise (MSME clinics). He regretted that government’s efforts in this direction are being thwarted by some agencies of government.
Said he, “Barely a month ago, I went to Nnewi, Onitsha and Kano, looking for small scale industries and one of the things people complained about was how difficult it was to access credit; to access money and how difficult it is to get all the approvals from relevant government agencies.
“To solve this problem, we decided to get all these agencies together to the hub of manufacturing as we have in Aba and create an interaction between them so that we can begin the process of showing the federal agencies that businesses are that of facilitating trade and manufacturing, that they are not supposed to be obstacle.
Prof. Osinbajo said government was aware that the biggest employers of labour and the largest accruals to the nation’s GDP came from local manufacturing and local industries and would therefore do everything to remove obstacles on their way for growth.
In his coment, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu said that the people of Aba are resilient and have can-do attitude which he said they deploy to those things they think they can do with their hands.
Ikpeazu expressed joy that the efforts of his administration and some of those in the National Assembly in drawing attention to the made in Aba products have drawn the attention of the Federal Government which he said informed the visit of the acting president.