Leather dealers fault export policy

[TGD]

 THE Leather and Allied Product Manufacturers' Association of Nigeria (LAPAN) at the weekend stated that the Export Expansion Policy (EEG) has impacted negatively on its members' businesses.

In a memorandum submitted to the House of Representatives Committee on Trade and Investment, Chairman, Board of Trustees, LAPAN, Bashir Ibrahim Danyaro, the group faulted claims that more jobs have been created due to the implementation of the EEG policy.

LAPAN argued: "There is the argument that the beneficiary companies do provide jobs but can the jobs they give compare to the

ones destroyed for the local tanners who do not have the financial muscles to compete in buying the raw skins?

"Due to the unfair 30 per cent EEG given to these exporters, thousands of jobs were lost in shoe companies across the country. Local leather cottage industries, which depend solely on local tanners for their source of leather, have been badly hit. Also, jobs lost at the Aba shoe clusters and the Kofar Wambai were in hundreds of thousands involving shoe artisans producing different brands of articles for home and export markets."

The leather workers noted: "The beneficiaries of the EEG in the leather sector have driven the price to an all-time high, making it impossible for any local user of leather to remain profitable in the business. For them, head or tail, they are winners because after all the incurable cost, they collect a gift of 30 per cent EEG - courtesy of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

"The committee should try and find out what causes the closure of these shoe factories such as Bata Shoes, Silver Shoes, Anita Shoes, Exclusive Leather, Whanu Shoes, Lennards Shoes, Ajalyn Shoes,

Kenny Shoes, Unix Shoes, John White and a host of others not mentioned. All these companies were household names in the Nigerian shoe industries providing hundreds of thousands of jobs."

They added: "Lack of transparency in the administration of the EEG in the leather sector calls for urgent scrutiny. A world body stated in its annual statistics on leather export from Nigeria in 2008 that the value of leather exported was $500 million and that in the year 2010, the value shot up to $3 billion. What a coincidence as 2010 was the year EEG returned and that was the same year poverty has eaten deep into Nigeria!"



The Guardian