The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has described the rift between Dangote Refinery and Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) as unfortunate and needless. The group recently revealed that PENGASSAN’s stance is an unnecessary attack on the private enterprise.
Speaking while announcing the association’s coming Annual General Meeting (AGM) taking place next month, Director-General (MAN), Segun Ajayi-Kadir, said that such disputes that lead to strikes have far-reaching implications on regular residents and businesses than those fighting.
According to him, factories suffered cuts in production schedules with the recent hike in transportation fare, and daily workers, including those in the logistics value chain that depend on the products made in those factories, were mostly affected.
He stated that the Federal Government should ensure such disputes never come up again because its revenue from Company Income Tax (CIT) would be affected as well when businesses cannot function.
“Capacity utilisation is already very low and if it drops even further, everyone is going to feel it, including the government. So, it is in the interest of everyone (labour, government, manufacturers, Dangote, PENGASSAN and everyone else) for the refinery not to fail.
For an investment of $20 billion, should we watch, fold our arms and let it fail? The case is in court and there is an injunction restraining the union from shutting down the plants. We can only hope common sense prevails,” he said.
On the lending rate, he noted that while the country’s economy has been a lot more stable in recent times, stronger reforms are needed to ease the pressure on the common man further.
Segun concluded by saying that CBN must lower interest rates even more to aid the survival of manufacturing companies across Nigeria.
“We are happy with the N75 billion that was given to us through the Bank of Industry (BoI), but we need much more than this. We are still asking for the N1 trillion we were promised, as we have shown we can be trusted with little.
We are battling N2 trillion unsold inventory as disposable income keeps dwindling every day. This is a major problem for manufacturers,” he added.
