Industry Player Seeks FG Intervention In Manufacturing Sector

Anyone who lives in Nigeria does not need to be aware of the harsh economic realities that the country’s residents must deal with, the managing director/CEO, May & Baker Nigeria Plc, Mr. Patrick Ajah has affirmed.

This is even as Ajah has called on the government to rollout interventions to cushion the harsh operating environment.

According to him, 2023 has been one of the most challenging years in operational history as a country.

Recall that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) Naira redesign policy and cash withdrawal limit created interruptions in economic operations and widespread hardship in the first two months of 2023 (January & February 2023).

“The policy created a liquidity crisis and just as companies were trying to recover from the impacts of COVID-19 and adjusting to the instabilities created by the Russian Ukraine war, we now had to deal with the impact of the cash crunch. Decision making became almost like a betting game, because just as we were trying to recover from one challenging situation, another one was looming and often due to avoidable circumstances,” the CEO lamented.

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Ajah tells me that, following the removal of fuel subsidy, most of his junior factory workers stopped going to work because they could not afford the new transport fares created by the increase in the price of fuel.

The harsh economic conditions orchestrated by these policies have not only crippled the operations of many small and medium pharmaceutical companies but has also forced some multinational pharmaceutical companies to shut down operations, he posited.

“It is no longer news that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has decided to close ongoing operations in Nigeria, highlighting the difficult and unfavorable operating environment of the nation’s economic sector. Another multinational pharmaceutical company and one of our contract manufacturing partners Sanofi Aventis have also announced their exit from direct operations in Nigeria by February next year,” he further disclosed.

Ajah however appealed to the government to intervene as the manufacturing sector which should be the driver of the economy is being decimated by these policies. “The result is that a number of blue-chip companies declared losses at the end of Q3 as a result of the Fx losses and high cost of operation,” he added.

For the meantime, the CEO tasked manufacturing companies to follow the footstep of May & Baker, by implementing reasonable cost saving initiatives to help mitigate against these rising costs.