The Nigerian Society of Engineers has urged the federal government to focus on simplifying regulatory processes, providing incentives for innovation, and infrastructural upgrades, and ensuring consistency to foster an enabling environment for manufacturing growth.
This plea comes as the society identifies seven challenges inhibiting the sector’s growth: infrastructural limitations, limited access to funds, technology, innovation, skill gaps, policy inconsistencies, regulatory hurdles, and global market dynamics.
During the National Engineering Conference, Exhibition, and Annual General Meeting, the society arrived at these conclusions and observations.
It highlighted the challenges associated with accessing funding, such as high interest rates, stringent collateral requirements, administrative bottlenecks, multiple taxes, and foreign exchange instability.
Reading the communique in Abuja, the President of the society, Tasiu Wudil, emphasized the need to reduce the gross deficit in skilled labor for re-engineering the manufacturing sector.
He lamented the impact of the existing policy framework on manufacturing and called for a thorough review.
Wudil underscored the significance of human capital development for sustainable economic growth.
Wudil acknowledged the government’s recent efforts to rehabilitate the Ajaokuta Iron and Steel Complex.
However, he called for the involvement of the engineering body to accelerate its reactivation, rehabilitation, and modernization to drive the much-needed industrialization of the country.
