The Chairman of Anambra Motor Manufacturing Company Limited, Chief (Dr) Godwin Ubaka Okeke, MON, has called on the National Assembly to change the 2013 Nigeria Automobile Policy into law.
Chief Okeke made the call while speaking to a cross-section of newsmen, at the 46th Annual General Meeting on Thursday, 14th July, 2022 in Lagos.
He maintained that the policy summersault of the Government, means all that was achieved during the previous years has been lost, as the automobile industry has fallen backward again.
“The policy somersault of Government in applying the same import duty rate of 10% on Semi-Knocked Down (SKD) and Fully Built (FB) buses and trucks took its toll on local manufacture of automobiles, as it was cheaper to import FB units. Therefore, assembly took a hard hit which can be gleaned from our income from this source plummeting from N85 million in 2020 to just N3 million in 2021.”
He further stated that because of this same reason, the sector has not witnessed any substantial foreign investment, and no one wants to invest in a place where there are no standing policies to protect their investment. With this, it has become a bit hard to realise the dream of building a 100% Nigerian car.
Also speaking at the media briefing, the Managing Director of the company, Mr Okeke Maduchukwu, further stressed the need for an automobile law. He pointed to the Ghana’s automobile law, which according to him, had seen the country becoming the destination point of major car manufacturers such as Toyota which has set up an assembly plant in the country.
The MD also said that the opening of the new Lagos showroom was purely a business move aimed getting closer to their customers, since Lagos is the biggest market in Nigeria.
