PAN begins local Peugeot 301 assembly
In a bold step to rekindle its lost glory, PAN Nigeria penultimate Tuesday launched a new production line in Kaduna for Peugeot 301 sedan. The return to full operations by the over 40 year local assembly plant followed a production roll-off ceremony performed by vice president Namadi Sambo at the PAN’s Kakuri factory in Kaduna alongside the commissioning of a proposed site for auto-components cluster park at the company’s premises.
The VP said the takeoff of production was vital to PAN and to the Nigeria automotive industry in particular, adding that “The decline of PAN and, correspondingly, that of the suppliers is a story of the country’s industrial sector in the last three decades.”
Sambo, represented by Olusegun Aganga, minister of industry, trade and investment, said President Goodluck Jonathan was determined to turn the fortunes of the sector around.
He said it was impossible for any nation to move from poor to rich by exporting raw materials alone, “as we have done in decades, without having a strong industrial and servicing sector.”
According to him, the exportation of raw materials translated into the exportation of jobs, stating that “for decades Nigeria has exported oil and gas but this has not made her rich and will not make her rich. What will make that happen is what it does with her agricultural commodities, the 44 solid minerals in commercial quantity, its crude oil and gas.”
He said this was the reason industrialisation was important, and that this led the president to launch the industrial revolution pact in February, this year. The plan, he said has four main features: “It identifies where the country has competitive and comparative advantage; where it can be number one in Africa and the top-10 player. Those sectors include the auto, textile industry. These are the two big industries in Kaduna State.”
He said for these sectors to succeed, there must be affordable financing in the country, improvement in skills, saying the president’s aspiration was not only to assemble cars in Nigeria.
The plan included the improvement of local content, moving from iron ore to steel, from gas to plastic, from rubber to tyres. Establishment of components’ park, he said was part of the plan and commended PAN for taking the initiative, adding that the auto-policy and other sectoral policies would be backed by law before the end of the administration, as directed by the president.
The sector, he noted, has been identified as a strategic industry group due to its large domestic market, strong industrial linkages, existing installed base and export potential to ECOWAS states and to other African countries.
The only country in Africa that has done more than Nigeria in the automotive sector was South Africa and that in that country, the industry was the second largest employer of labour in the manufacturing sector.
Auto sector accounted for about 12 percent of their export and accounted for about 4 or 5 percent of their GDP, adding that was how big the industry could become in Nigeria, particularly with its population of over 170m people.
Federal government established the Nigeria automotive industry development plan to transform the nation’s automotive industry and attract investments into the sector.
The plan is to into consideration the issues that led to the collapse of the industry in the past. It was developed after extensive consultations with existing local auto manufacturers and international bodies as well as relevant ministries, departments and agencies.
Automotive components cluster parks would be established in three parts of the country, and that the government was discussing with Brazil, adding that the groundbreaking of one of these parks would be done shortly.
On skills acquisition, he said the government was working with the Nigeria Universities Commission to have automotive engineering in the curricula of universities, stating that “three universities; University of Ibadan, Tafawa Balewa University in Bauchi, and Elezade University are already offering this programme to produce automotive engineers to support this industry.”
International standards would be maintained in the production process to ensure global competitiveness, saying that the Standards Organisation of Nigeria was already working on the standards required in the auto industry.