Ngozi Amuche
5 April 2005
Lagos — CHAIRMAN of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, and Industry (LCCI) Mr. Akin Akinbowale has lamented the state of infrastructure in the country, arguing that there has been no significant improvement in recent times.
He made the remark in a meeting organised by the LCCI recently in Lagos.
Mr. Akinbowale lamented that the huge sums that companies spent on fuel for running their generating sets was eating deep into their profit margin.
He observed that recent efforts by the Lagos State Government in the area of road repairs were noticeable.
However, he urged the private sector to regard the problems of infrastructure as opportunities for investment instead of leaving everything to government alone.
Meanwhile, the group of industry representatives present at the meeting, noted that the N25 billion capitalisation directive had made mergers and acquisition in the banking sector inevitable, adding that this has been partly responsible for difficulty experienced in recent times by the business community in raising bank loans to finance their ventures.
The chairman also hoped that with the eventual emergence of mega banks, the situation would change positively for the real sector as it noted that Industrialist had no option than to look to banks for long-term credit facilities.
He explained that the interest rates situation in the country was still antithetical to industrial growth, adding that government has not been able to tame the rising trend of inflation in the country.
In addition, he said that in a bid to encourage local manufacturing, the government in the last few years had granted some duty concessions."
"This became imperative in order to reduce the high cost of doing business as well as to position local industries to compete effectively in the global market. The concessions provides relief to manufacturers in jeopardy." He said.
He also commended the efforts of the organised private sector (OPS) at compelling government to listen to it as far as fashioning out an enduring pension scheme was concerned.
In related development, the managing director/Chief executive of Xerox Nigeria Limited Mr. David Townsend has lamented the government's delay in paying for goods supplied it.
"Compounding this is that liquidity in the market has forced many companies to slim back or stop their purchases of electronic office equipment, while the banks have basically stopped doing business due to recapitalisation process in the financial industry."
The managing director explained that Xerox is also adversely affected by the importation of equipment by individuals who sell them at cost plus five per cent killing any possible chance of Xerox competing with others in the industry.
According to him, "those importing equipment do not support the infrastructure of Nigeria. They do not pay taxes, they have little or no overhead" giving false message to our clients that we are making huge margins. But they also offer no services" he concluded.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2005 Daily Champion. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
