FG Projects 8.10% Growth for Manufacturing, Agriculture Sectors in 2025

Dike Onwuamaeze

Contrary to the complaints by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) that its members are finding it hard to access foreign exchange (FX), the federal government has clarified that there is enough supply of FX to meet demands on the official market.

The clarification was given last week in Lagos by the Special Adviser to the President on Economic Affairs, Dr. Tope Fasua, during the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), “2025 Economic Review and Outlook Conference,” where he projected that the manufacturing and agricultural sectors would each experience 8.10 percentage growth rate in 2025 even though they recorded 1.9 and 1.4 percentage growth in 2024 respectively.

According to Fasua, the government has been able to demystify all the talk about insufficient supply of foreign exchange.

He said: “Officially, from what I have seen and what the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has showed us, there is enough supply of foreign exchange. 

“The foreign exchange regime we have now required everyone has to deal through their respective banks. What we have seen with the introduction of Bloomberg FEMS is that there is usually enough supply of FX on a daily basis.

“So, it depends on their strategies as manufacturers. In Nigeria we like to complain a lot but this current FX regime has shown transparency.

“If it is official and can be funded officially there seems to be enough money (FX) right now. That is why the Naira has maintained about N1,530 for a while now.”

Fasua also said that the current reforms that were instituted by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration has constrained, “many of manufacturing industries to source their raw materials locally, which are things they would have imported in the past.”

Speaking, a Professor of Economics and Founder of BAA Associates Limited, Professor Biodun Adedipe, advised the federal government to address food, manufacturing and energy deficits, which he described as third world’s perennial economic challenges.

Adedipe urged the government to intervene directly in the manufacturing sector with incentives that would enable Nigeria to focus on primary manufacturing like food processing in order to produce things that are majorly consumed by Nigerians.

He said: “When it comes to manufacturing, we should focus on the primary because there are primary, medium and high-tech manufacturing.

“In this system we do not start with high-tech. We will start with the basics like food technology. It means that there must be incentives to produce them locally and also create disincentives for importing those items.

“That is increasing duties on manufactured goods that are being imported and reduce duties on the raw materials and inputs for domestic manufacturing. That is the way you play that within the tariff structure space.”

He added: “Until we address manufacturing and address productivity in agriculture we will not get the kind of rapid and increasing growth that we have desired over the years.”

 Adedipe also said that the solution to food deficit in Nigeria is to produce a larger volume of foodstuffs by expanding the hectares of land being cultivated for crop production and significantly reducing the post-harvest losses by investing more on infrastructure for food storage and processing.

He said, “If we are able to do that, we will have a significant increase in food availability and the next thing that will follow is affordability.

“This will have a positive effect on food inflation, knowing that inflation in Nigeria is likely structural and not monetary in nature.”