By Moses Ebosele (ebosele@hotmail.com) –
The Chief Executive Officer of Kia Motors Nigeria, Jacky Hathiramani has advised the new Director-General, National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Mr. Aliyu Jelani, to facilitate review of Nigeria’s automotive policy as part of measures to meet what he described as “current realities”.
Hathiramani, while commending the appointment of Jelani in a statement on Friday said: “We need to further strengthen the policy by reviewing it to meet the current realities and position the locally produced cars as one of Nigeria’s best export to sub-Saharan Africa.”
He added: “The outstanding resume of Mr. Jelani points to the fact that the Federal Government is committed to the development of automotive manufacturing in Nigeria. With Mr. Jelani’s international experience, we are confident that he will charge the council to fully realise its objectives of providing a policy framework that will set the industry on the path of development and help it contribute its quota to the industrialisation of Nigeria economy as evident in other economies”.
The Kia Nigeria boss challenged the new DG to take a critical look at the present state of the industry, adding that there is need to take implementation of the policy as a priority.
Explaining further, he said: “The auto policy has reeled in some appreciable gains bringing to the fore local production of automobiles in the country as many a new car sold in Nigeria today are locally assembled. Consequently, we need to further strengthen the policy by reviewing it to meet the current realities and position the locally produced cars as one of Nigeria’s best export to sub-Saharan Africa. ”
According to the statement, “with a number of assembly plants in Nigeria today, the production capacity of these plants are over 380,000 units per annum, this is primarily the gains from the auto policy. However, the recent news emerging from the automobile companies are pointing to the fact that the manufacturing plants’ capacity is underutilised as a result of the record low sales of cars in the last one year. While it’s evident that the economic recession is a major challenge in the low sales, stakeholders have also espoused on some other salient inhibiting factors that contribute to the staggered development of the industry”.
Hathiramani posited that for the industry to be rid of substandard cars and contribute immensely to the GDP of the country, the influx of imported used cars should be controlled.
On the point raised by customers that their interest in used cars is premised on the cost of new cars, Hathiramani charged the new DG to facilitate one of the cardinal points of the policy that made provision for partnership with financial institutions in offering low interest rate car acquisition schemes for the populace to make their owning new cars preferable option to the imported used cars.
On the local content utilisation in the production of cars, Hathiramani is of the opinion that the manufacturing of automobile is centered on many ancillary company that produce some of the parts for the cars like batteries, leather/fabric for car seats, bolts and nuts, amongst others.
According to him, the establishments of these ancillary companies are directly proportional to the market volume and the demand for new cars can increase when there are affordable finance schemes and a reduction in the importation of used cars.
