Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) has harped on the need by Federal Government to evolve policy framework that would enforce local manufacturers to sourced raw materials that are readily available locally.

The Director General of RMRDC, Peter Onwualu who advocated this when the Senate Committee on Science and Technology, led by its chairman, Greggory Ngaji paid an oversight visit to his office in Abuja, argued that the move will discourage importation of locally sourced raw materials that are useful to the local industries.

Continuous importation of raw materials that are readily available in the country by the industrial sector, he argued is detrimental to the realization of Vision 2020 when Nigeria is looking forward to join the 20 most industrialized nations of the world.

Expressing concern on the need to enact policies that can effectively curb importation of the local raw materials by the local manufacturers, Onwualu said the council is in collaboration with relevant stakeholders for the drafting of the policy that will ultimately address the issue of local content in raw material sourcing.

Noting that the council is ready to drive the process to a point where raw materials are sourced locally, up to 15 percent on gradual basis, he said "we have gone far in the process, we have done a lot of home work, consultants have done their own, we have multi-stakeholders forum where we presented the draft to the manufacturers, we are about to have the second and the third forum in Kaduna and another in Enugu. By that time the entire country would have had input into the document

"Once this is done, it will go into the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and then the National Assembly. We believe that this will be completed before the end of the year"

Positing that most of the drafts may become legislation, Anwualu said the draft is ready "all what we are waiting for is to get input from the relevant stakeholders and by the time it gets to the National Assembly it will scale through."

Onwualu also pointed out that failure or lack of capacity by the local industries to add value to their local content has hindered Nigeria from benefiting from the current competitiveness in the global market.

A situation he said has gingered the federal government to ensuring provision of conducive environment for the local industry to thrive.

He said, "We are doing every thing possible to ensure that our industries are able to compete in the area of industrial capacity with other countries. One of the things we have done is that we have facilitated the emergence of PAN African competitiveness forum that brings together industrialists, private sectors and innovators from research institutes and universities so that we can use innovations from research institute to improve competitiveness in our industry," he said.

Noting that ban on importation might not yield the desired result as Nigeria had already signed several treaties like the World Trade organization (WTO), he said the answer to the question of Nigeria's inability to sell itself at the global market is to ensure that its local products are able to compete favourably with the imported ones.

This he said will be achieved when Nigeria begins to appreciate its local resources and add value to them