Kia making efforts to improve assembly status- BPP

A two-man team from the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) made up of Eze J. Obasi, director in charge of special research and Adebowale Adedokun, head, research, training and strategic planning have expressed satisfaction with the stage of assembly facilities at they saw while on an inspection tour United Vehicles Assembly Limited, local assemblers of Kia model of vehicles in Nigeria.

The officials of the Bureau for Public Procurement saddled with the responsibility of regulating procurement for all the ministries, departments, federal government parastatals and agencies of government was a inspection visit to UVAL last week to ascertain their current and genuine status as a local automobile assemblers.

United Vehicle Assembly Plant had written to the BPP to come and see the Kia assembly plant in order to assess the assembly plant’s level of readiness to assemble vehicles for local consumption. In the words of Eze Obasi,  “We have come, we have gone round the facility and we have also seen that, there have been a conscious effort by United Vehicles Assembly Limited to implement federal government automotive policy which is 30% local content.”

The BPP officials noted that notwithstanding teething problems that is confronting different sectors of the economy, UVAL have as many as 300 indigenous Nigeria engineers that are fresh from few Nigerian universities, some of which the management is planning to send abroad to go and acquire more knowledge.

According to Eze J. Obasi, “From what we have seen, UVAL is making conscious efforts to improve their status in terms of manufacture of automobile, but one of their fears is the proliferation of second hand (tokunbo) vehicles.”

It is expected that by the time, government stops the influx of these used vehicles; there production capacity will go up and when that happens, it will be an opportunity for them to employ more Nigerians.

Another problem he said they have is foreign exchange, but stated that he is optimistic the federal government is dealing with that. We know that as soon as government address such issues, production will be ramped up because at this moment, the factory is fairly empty and I know it is affected by the dollar rate.

Let me tell you that, it is not only you that are affected, everybody, every business is equally by the foreign exchange issue, but I can assure you that government is actually doing something to tackle the situation.

Am sure we are beginning to see the indices of what the government is doing already, so it is better for us to suffer now and get it right which is happening. I hope that with time, it will get better and you will start having your full production and then take in more staff.

MIKE OCHONMA