In this interview, the Director General of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Segun Ajayi-Kadir, spoke on sundry issues relating to tax regulations and some of the challenges that manufacturers in Nigeria face in tax compliance. Excerpts:

Manufacturing in Nigeria and where the sector is at right nowLike most other sectors, the manufacturing sector in Nigeria is going through quite a difficult time and just to say that the sector is not insulated from the challenges that confront the economy in general.

We are affected by quite a number of issues like the foreign exchange, inflation, the fact that we do not have infrastructure that supports production, our trade and industrial policies are not focused on delivering a viral manufacturing sector, the fact that the global economy itself is suffering a backlash in terms of geopolitics and in terms of economic nationalism.

All of these have imposed a lot of pressure on the manufacturing sector to the extent that the sector contributes only between 9% and 12% to the gross domestic product (GDP). It is also not able to generate the kind of employment expected of it.

All of the challenges have contributed to the rather lackluster performance of the sector, but that is not to say that we are not manufacturing in Nigeria. There are quite a number of things that we manufacture in Nigeria, we even export to other African countries and to Europe. I’m sure you are aware of the revolution that the Dangote Industry has brought into the sector, and there are quite a number of industries that are actually blazing the trail in the Nigerian economy.

Currently in Nigeria, we refine oil, produce and export cement, and we are very good in plastics, our electrical cables are some of the best in the world. We produce and export leather, we produce garments. There are quite a number of things we do in the pharmaceutical industry, even in the steel sector, and the pulp and paper sector.

MAN has 10 sectors and 60 sub sectors and we have manufacturers that produce in all these areas, so we have quite an array of products that are produced in Nigeria.

The safest thing to buy in Nigeria are products made in Nigeria because you are sure they are very much regulated by NAFDAC, SON and other regulatory agencies, so you are sure with buying made in Nigeria.

sustained. We also have a need that the EEG by government should be refocused because that grant, for instance, has suffered one of the highest levels of disruptions that you can have in terms of incentives to the manufacturing sector. So it should be streamlined in such a way that you can use the proceeds from there to be able to pay all tax obligations to government without any form of limitations, where you can deliberately incentivize manufacturers by not obliging them to pay untoward taxes that many regulatory agencies in Lagos State, for instance, have continued to impose on the people.