Disturbed by the economic down turn now ravaging the country, importers under the aegis of Nigerian Association of importers, yesterday in Onitsha, Anambra state hinted to newsmen that enough foreign exchange should be offered to local industries to enable them compete with their foreign counterparts as part of solving the present foreign exchange problem.
Making this disclosure, the founder and Chairman, Board of Trustees of the importers, Chief Gilbert Obi Bravo, regretted also that importers who he said were the people that handle the foreign exchange were not consulted to make their contribution in the drawing of the 2016 budget.
According to him, “they are drawing the budget without making any reference to us. They should invite importers for them to know what they do not know and we are there to give them certain information to help them arrive at a certain decision”.
“All the Federal Government is doing is to buy time to see if the economy will improve. It can’t do magic, it should liaise with importers and industrialists as is drawing the budget, we are the people using the foreign exchange, we know what we are doing as regards importation”.
“Nigeria is a dumping ground for foreign products. We produce little or nothing .we import more products than the foreign exchange we have”, he revealed.
He said further that, “presently Nigeria is handicapped and Federal Government can’t do anything. Is like when you have #10 and you want to buy goods worth #100”.
On the way forward the Board chairman said, “the government should encourage industrialists especially the local ones, they are not being encouraged, most industries closed down because they could not be able to compete with foreign counterparts”.
To buttress his point further he said “We have less foreign exchange than we need. We import more goods than the foreign exchange we have.”
“Again, oil was about 150 dollar before, today it is about 26 dollar to 41 dollar. Our foreign reserve is about 27million dollar, few months ago demand for foreign exchange stands at 30million dollar, so how do you reconcile it?”