Fidson confirms increased FX access since February

Fidson Healthcare Plc has confirmed that its dollar access has increased since February this year.

At a press conference in Lagos last week, Abiola Adebayo, executive director, Fidson Healthcare Plc, said its dollar access this had improved compared with the horrid experiences of 2016.

“At that time last year, we said we must buy dollars at whatever rate, as long as it was available. This is for a simple reason: To keep our people working. I have been working with a number of people for the past 15 years. How will I look at them in the face and ask them to go home? We said, ‘let’s put all the naira we had to get as much dollars that we could get to sustain our production’,” Adebayo said.

“Some of the executives had to take half salary to keep our people. But since the beginning of this year, we have been having a better access to dollars, even though not at the rate we would have wanted,” he said.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has raised dollar supply since the turn of 2017, opening new windows for exporters, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and investors. In August 2016, the apex bank directed that 60 percent of available dollars be allotted to local manufacturers, but many of them said they could not get more than 10 percent of their needs then.

Fidson Healthcare Plc recently completed its N9 billion drug-making plant in Sango-Otta, Ogun State.

According to Adebayo, key issues affecting the factory were high cost of energy and water issues.

“When you have electricity for five staggered hours in 24 hours and you can’t even use the electricity you get because it’s poor, what do you do?” asked Afolabi.

“We have a new plant but we also have six generators. You generate 2.5 kilowatts of electricity for every litre of diesel. We have issues with clean water supply. Dollar access is improving better than last year when some of us took half salaries to keep our staff, but government needs to emulate Indians. In India, you get 10 percent for repatriating foreign exchange into the economy,” he said.

ODINAKA ANUDU