The Association of Meter Manufacturers of Nigeria has said that the ongoing plans to empower foreign companies to import meters into Nigeria will cripple the investments of local manufacturers.
The association said the criteria to partake in the $155 million World Bank loan for metering favoured foreign companies instead of the local meter manufacturing industries.
Addressing journalists on Thursday in Abuja, the secretary of the association, Mr Durosola Omogbenigun, said the World Bank programme is inimical to the meter manufacturing industries and the progress that has been made in the local content policy.
“This World Bank project, we believe, is inimical to the growth of the manufacturing sector. It is inimical to the progress that has been made in the local content policy. Also, it negates the gains that have been made in backward integration, technology transfer and employment of staff within the industry.
“Sometime in 2020, the government decided to accelerate metering. They created phase zero, phase one and phase two.
“For phase zero, the government bought about one million meters distributed and the government said there is going to be phase two which was going to be funded by the World Bank.
“We started phase zero, we finished it, About a million meters were distributed and then we got into the bids for phase one and it was scoped to be the provision and distribution of four million meters .
In achieving this the Central Bank said the four million meters will not be imported and they will support local manufacturers to build capacity.
“At the time we finished phase one, which covered four million meters, the investment that went into the bid process by our members were substantial,” he explained.
Omogbenigun said by the time they finished the bid process, the Central Bank said it was no longer in the position to fund phase one. He said efforts were made by the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to get alternative funding but all to no avail.
He further explained that the foreign companies that would qualify are allowed to bring in fully built meters and the package also said that each of these companies and the winning companies will be given the Import Duty Exemption Certificate.
He said the Certificate is a programme that has been designed to facilitate the importation of equipment in various sectors for the local companies for equipment and not for products, but the World Bank 1.2 million units of meters programme were going to be imported on duty free.
“This will definitely kill the local industries. It will take away all the progress that have been made in local production capacity and local content policy of the government in the meter manufacturing sector, our backward integration programme will definitely suffer a serious setback.
“The bid is due for submission and opening on July 11, so we decided we have to raise up our advocacy to make sure that this bid are not submitted under the existing structure, that the government should look at it, call us to a table, let us be included to the programme. The evaluation criteria should be restructured so that local companies can participate either as joint ventures or individually,” he submitted.
Mr Ifeanyi Okeke, the treasurer of the association further stated that “We are not against World Bank funded programmes. We understand the impact of funding to a developing economy like ours, so we need the money. But what we are saying is that what we need to do is to direct this funding in a way that will catalyse job creation and economic growth, development and industrial revolution,”
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