SA reaffirms US investors interest in Nigeria’s auto industry
Some automobile manufacturers in South Africa representing the American brands has renewed their interest in setting up auto assembly plants in Nigeria as soon as possible. The American automakers in South Africa, the hub of automotive imports into the sub-Sahara Africa like Ford and General Motors
had at various times described Nigeria as market with huge potentials that must not be ignored by any serious automaker.
In a telephone chat with BusinessDay motoring last Monday in Johannesburg attending the Ford Go Further event in Sandton Convention Center, some of the automakers said they are still watching with keen interest what the federal government’s future pronouncement would be as it affects the ongoing auto policy initiated by the former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
Only last weekend, the United States embassy in Abuja through its Counsellor for Economic Affairs, Alan Tousignant, said the recent visit by President Muhammadu Buhari to the US has triggered off enquiries from potential investors on Nigeria’s automotive industry.
Alan Tousignant stated this when he visited the Director-General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) last Friday in Abuja. According to Bello Rasheed, the Principal Executive Officer (Information) of NADDC, Tousignant visited to make enquiries on the Nigerian Automotive Industry Development Plan (NAIDP).
Tousignant said he was at the NADDC to get answers for the deluge of enquiries from the American government and its business community on the National Automotive Industrial Development Plan (NAIDP). NADDC’s Director-General Jalal, and the council’s Director of Policy and Planning, Luqman Mamudu, received and briefed the U.S. team.
The statement said: “ Tousignant said that there had been an upsurge in the amount of business enquiries from America since the recent visit of President Buhari to the U.S.“He told the NADDC DG that quite a number of the latest enquiries from potential American investors were on the Nigeria auto industry.
“Therefore, he needed to know about applicable staff structure, incentives, availability of skilled personnel, current total installed capacity, local value addition and industrial clusters and infrastructure. He also asked questions on applicable safety standards, annual national vehicle demand, export potential to other countries, among others.’’
The NADDC DG while commending the keen interest shown by American companies and businessmen in the industry told his visitors that two American automobile giants, Ford Motors and General Motors, had confirmed their interest in starting vehicle assembly operations in 2016.
Aminu Jalal explained that Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa with very huge market for automobiles. He stressed that the auto policy is intended to transform Nigeria into a major vehicle manufacturing hub for leveraging on the country’s abundant trainable labour force and material resources especially petrochemical-based.
The NADDC boss told Tousignant and members of his team that with a population of over 170 million, Nigeria could not continue to run an import dependent economy,’’ the statement said. BusinessDay recall that the NAIDP was launched by the federal government in 2014 to limit excessive automobile imports and promote massive investments in affordable made-in-Nigeria cars.
On his assumption of office, stakeholders in the automotive industry had expressed fears that the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration would discard the policy, but he used the U.S. visit to assure investors of his commitment to the development of the auto industry and reiterated by the South African automakers, BusinessDay learnt.
MIKE OCHONMA