By Eberechi Obinagwam
President of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Senior Staff Association, (FOBTOB), comrade Jimoh Oyibo, has called on the federal government not to allow the food sector to die like its counterpart, the Textile industry because it is the life of any nation.
The president made this known while referring to the recently planned excise duty on non-alcoholic carbonated drinks in a press briefing with the Nigerian Labour Writers Association, (LAWAN), on Thursday, in Lagos.
He explained that the justification by the National Assembly, the Customs, and the Finance Ministry that manufacturers of non-alcoholic drinks are making fortunes is not enough to subject them to another financial burden, else they will collapse and it will affect the industry. He said the argument that there is a 30 per cent excise levy on alcoholic drinks should not motivate the federal government to tax the non-alcoholic drinks sector.
Said he: ”if this country needs to survive, Food, Beverage and Tobacco Sector must be taken care of,” he said.
He called on the federal government to engage all stakeholders constructively so as to arrive at a more beneficial conclusion to save the already struggling companies in the sector that are only surviving on a small profit margin.
On backward integration, he said while it is a good plan that is capable of stimulating economic development, especially the manufacturing, he however said that the plan may not work due the high rate of insecurity in the country.
”They need to repeat a national dialogue, else we will likely repeat Chinua Achebe’s last book ‘there was a Country.’ The major concern being raised by the players in our industry is the fact that they have not often been engaged and even where such consultation exists, it’s shallow without any depth. Consultation on issues of backward integration should be robust and all-encompassing,” he said.
Also, in making reference to supply chain as part of the industry’s challenges, he referred to the Apapa Sea Port as being too congested, urging the government to declare a state of emergency. “It should be reconstructed, decongested and decentralised because it is causing pains. Federal government should open more seaports because the seaport in Lagos is congested. The time it takes to clear goods is affecting the price of products because these owners spend more to pay demurrage which they add to the products, and in turn affect the price of products in the market,” he said.
He explained that during the lockdown, the laxity in the supply chain, which is critical to economic recovery in Nigeria, became evident, and from that time, several attempts made to put this in the right direction have not yielded desired result, adding that failure to address this may lead to a crash of the economy.
He said: “Unfortunately, the body language of government agencies saddled with the responsibility to contain this challenge has been extremely poor. Movement of finished products and raw materials is daily distressed and disrupted, ” he said.
He said as the new president of FOBTOB, he has visited almost all the companies that are under the sector to know their challenges, and their peculiar needs and sought ways to go about them.