BoI MD urges greater support for local industries
The Managing Director, The Bank of Industry, Mr. Rasheed Olaoluwa, has called on the Nigerian government and citizens to give more support to local manufacturers.
Olaoluwa made the call in Lagos while on a facility tour of two factories, Memmcol and Wempco.
Olaluwa, at Memmcol, a prepaid and post-paid electricity meter manufacturing company, commended the management of the company for bringing remarkable ingenuity and technology to bear on the metering business.
He said, “Memmcol is a Nigerian company that has demonstrated tenacity and ruggedness in a challenging environment. The company has also developed core competence in an area that has not been explored by other companies in Nigeria.
“I must say that I have been very impressed by the level of technology that is on display here. People who have engineering background will understand what I mean when I say that I saw semi-conductors, integrated electric circuit as well as the process of actually making the circuits.
“It is the first time this is happening in Nigeria. The key issue is that we have a company based in Nigeria and owned by Nigerians, that has the capacity to supply almost all the electricity meters that we need in this country,” he said.
The BoI boss stated that there was no need importing items that Nigerians were capable of producing locally.
He said, “I have undertaken on behalf of BoI to help Nigerian companies that have the capacity to produce what Nigerian businesses require. We don’t need to import such things. This is one of the reasons why our foreign reserves have been under pressure because we keep importing what we produce locally.
“I think a major strategic step for our country to take is to ensure that we come up with a policy that ensures that any company we identify as having capacity to produce items locally is given support and patronised,” he said.
Olaoluwa observed that Memmcol had developed a very robust billing system that made it possible for people to pay their electricity bill and check meter balance on their mobile devices. “These are things that we should be very proud of as Nigerians. I also think they require all the support they can get from us and all Nigerians,” he said.
He pointed out that it was impossible for the country to develop its industrial base by relying on imported goods, adding that he would make presentation to the Federal government identifying key customers of the bank and others in the economy with capacity to produce locally.
He said, “This is the most practical way of creating jobs in this country. If we begin to support companies like this, they will grow and they will hire more people.
“This company can hire up to 500 but right now, they have 100. If this company is really patronised, the number of staff they employ can actually increase five-fold. We have been exporting our jobs to other countries because we are importing goods from them.”
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