MAN laments ‘unfriendly’ manufacturing environment in Imo, Abia

Worried by the continued harsh and unfriendly manufacturing environment faced by manufacturers in Imo and Abia States, Jones Nwabueze Anyanwu chairman of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Imo/Abia, has urged the governments of the two states to urgently address the challenge.

“The operating environment in Imo and Abia States was rather challenging and unfriendly for the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing in Abia State was bedeviled by poor and dilapidated road network, epileptic power supply, flouting of court injunction restraining  the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company, Osisioma from disconnecting members, militarised/crude method of taxes and levies’ collection by tax contractors, and security agents,” Anyanwu said.

On the situation in Imo State, he bemoaned the condition the remaining manufacturers who are still operating along Owerri/Onitsha road industrial layout, Irete in Owerri West Local Government Area are facing.

“Owerri-Onitsha road industrial estate in Imo State is suffering rapid road dilapidation occasioned by massive sand excavation activities,” he further observed.

 He said the economy had continued to face several other challenges as a result of macroeconomic distortions such as the problems of increased level of poverty, poor social services, poor infrastructural development and high interest rate on borrowing.

The MAN chief however, urged the governments of Imo and Abia States to urgently address the various manufacturing challenges facing the economy and manufacturers on that axis.

He further said the federal, inter-state and feeder roads in the two states were death traps and could not allow free movement of goods and human beings.

Anyanwu decried the several check points mounted by the security agents in the South East and South-South regions and the consequent tolls paid by the manufacturers to the police and army personnel at those check points. He stressed that such also had contributed to the problem of transportation of raw materials and finished products.

He described the multiple taxes and levies and the militarised method of collection as unfair because such had cost loss of lives in both states.

 SABY ELEMBA, Owerri.