VI SON: All hope not lost
The business community and industries in Nigeria would grow with proper implementation of the Standards of Nigeria [SON] Act 2015 and would bring about massive job creation and employment, SON’s Director General Mr. Osita Aboloma told Daily Trust in Lagos. He said it will also create a market for certified Made-in Nigeria products globally.
The SON boss stated that concerted efforts are being made to bring back the industries that hitherto dotted the landscape of Lagos, Aba, Port-Harcourt, Ibadan, Benin City, Kano, Kaduna and other cities in Nigeria, saying the standards body is currently deploying the use of standardisation and quality assurance to boost Nigeria’s industrialisation drive.
He said, “With standardisation, we want to ensure industrial growth. We need to make Nigeria emerge as an investment destination and hub in sub-Saharan Africa. With solid industrial base, Nigeria could become the next global economic powerhouse, following the footsteps of the Asian Tigers. We want to attain economic diversification from oil to non-oil economy via rapid industrial growth. We, at SON, want to empower and strengthen the growth of MSMEs. We have already started doing this. We are granting waivers to over one million SMEs on their products registration and certifications. We must endeavour to put in place structures and policies that would enable us to be exporting finished goods than raw materials.”
Aboloma also said, “Industrialisation would create enough jobs for our teeming population and guarantee development. In achieving these, the federal government is paying due attention to the manufacturing sector. The national clinics for MSMEs operators, EODB, PEBEC, ERGP, among others are geared towards industrial growth.” According to him, the Act sets out to sanitize the nation’s industrial, commercial, business and market space of sub-standard products. It is in tandem with the economic diversification, economic growth and recovery, industrial and agricultural revolution programme of the present federal government, he said.
Also, NEPC recently launched a number of initiatives aimed at improving the nation’s non-oil export performance. Such incentives include pre-shipment incentives especially designed to boost the growth of SMEs which is the bedrock of economic development and diversification. Chairman, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria Export Promotion Group (MANEG) Ede Dafinone, while acknowledging the new basket of initiatives, expects a remarkable growth in the non-oil export volume by the end of first quarter of 2019. He said based on export data from NERC, non-oil export volume as at the end of third quarter of 2017 stood at $1.260 billion.