Charles Nwaoguji
Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has expressed worries over the slow pace of growth of industrialisation, especially the manufacturing sector of the country.
The President of the association, Mansur Ahmed, said that even more worrisome is the process of de-industrialisation that is increasingly evident in some states of the country.
According to him, Kano in particular has suffered over the past two decades during which almost half of its thriving manufacturing establishments have shut down.
“Clearly, we are concerned and we must explore all potential strategies to arrest and reverse this de-industrialisation process,” he stated.
Ahmed, who stated this at MAN’s roundtable on Leveraging China-Nigeria Economic Relations to Re-industrialise the Economy held recently in Kano, noted that another source of worry is the increasing Chinese influence on the global economy, specifically on developing countries, including Nigeria, and the opportunity this opens up for the country’s economy.
According to him, “it is now common knowledge that China has become the 2nd largest economy in the world with a GDP of over $10 trillion and is rapidly becoming a major factor in the changing global economic order.”
He explained that in 2015, the Chinese government launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a global economic development strategy aimed at changing the architecture of the world economy.
The MAN president noted that the BRI involves a $900 billion infrastructure and investment programme designed to connect over 67 countries in Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa, to China with the goal of changing the direction of trade and investment flows.