By Nicholas Onwukwe
The Raw Materials Research Development Council of Nigeria (RMRDC) had said that the Federal
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Government would be addressing issues on harnessing N1 trillion lost through raw material importation [pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]mostly by the real sector in a summit to be held this month.
Dr Ibrahim Hussaini, the director-general of the Council said over the weekend that the aim was to foster industrial collaboration, synergies and linkages in order to promote MSME Cluster development in [pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]Nigeria.
Remarkably, Nigeria loses about N1 trillion annually to the importation of raw materials for [pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]manufacturing and construction companies according to industry watchers.
Although, the Federal Government has made some strides in backward integration in boosting key sectors of the economy such as witnessed in sugar, cement and petro-chemical industries, Dangote and other cement manufacturers in the country spend $225 million annually to import gypsum for cement manufacturing.
A raw materials summit to be held on January 21 and 22, Hussaini said, would be addressing the core needs to advance the production of raw materials in the country in order to reduce the importation of raw materials like gypsum which is in abundance in Nigeria, but has not been explored sufficiently for the usage of the cement industry.
Industry watchers believe that proper utilisation of the nation’s raw materials would address over reliance on importation of raw materials into the country and proper growing of capacity utilisation in the nation’s real sector.
“Dangote Cement is currently being used in road construction across the states,while brands of Lafarge Cement were used to build the Third Mainland Bridge and the National Assembly construction, but we cannot keep relying on importation of gypsum for such massive investment”, Okwudili Anokwulu, a public affairs analyst, said.
The summit is designed to be all-encompassing and will serve as a means of linking all strategic partners in deploying developed technologies for Micro-Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) clusters in all the 774 local government areas in Nigeria, the director general stated.