Nigeria’s earnings from overseas will drop hugely this year
due to the falling global oil prices.Olusegun Aganga, the Minister of Industry,
Trade and Investments, gave this hint, weekend, when he inspected Secure ID and
its subsidiary, Secure Card Manufacturing Limited in Lagos. The Minister noted
that the falling oil prices will affect the country’s balance of payments with
the rest of the world.
“We are going to have big balance of payments this year due
to falling oil price,” he said. Balance of payments() is an economic
terminology that describes the record of all economic transactions between the
residents of a country and the rest of the world in a particular period (over a
quarter of a year or more commonly over a year). These transactions are made by
individuals, firms and government bodies. Thus the balance of payments includes
all external visible and non-visible transactions of a country during a given
period, usually a year.
oil-rig400Aganga commended the management of Secure ID,
saying “what you are doing is what every Nigerians should be thinking of-
moving the country away from import dependence.” He assured the company of
government’s supports: “we will work with you over time to reduce your cost of production.”
In his response to requests by Mrs. Kofo Akinkugbe, Managing
Director, Secure ID,that government should protect the company through
reduction of duty on raw materials from 10 percent to 5 percent under HS CODE
390.300.00 now 390.30.00, the minister replied:
“Any adjustments we will make will be based on
sector-specific, and not to individual company. We don’t want to be seen to be
favouring one company against the others.
Our approach under the NIRP has always been about
value-addition, encouraging local content and our job is to create enabling
environment for you.” “ The new tariff which the ministry is proposing is still
at 10 percent but even with that, really, we can survive at 10 percent but for
us to be competitive, like Oliver Twist, we are asking for a reduction to five
percent. Five percent will make us a lot more competitive,” said Akinkugbe.
According to her, our manufacturing plants will be able to
compete with card manufacturers in South Africa, Thailand, UAE and Europe, if
the duty on our raw materials is adjusted. It is import that the duty is
adjusted.
Fielding question on what actually prompted her to have
invested in the business, she replied “There is a story behind the
establishment of Secure ID; we started as a company that offers security and
management system such as Closed Circuit TV, using biometric, and also card
assessment and we did that for about nine years and we got involved and we
regulate the smartcard Association of Nigeria and we were invited to be a member
of the board of trustees. What that
association was supposed to do is to drive the usage of cards in the country.
“For us to take the country from cash to card and while
doing all of that we saw that there was a gap in the market-there wasn’t a card
manufacturing company in the country and all the cards were being imported and
we felt that with the kind of population we have, Nigeria has the market for
the state of the art card manufacturing plant like this.”
She disclosed that this plant is not built to serve only
Nigeria’s market, it is also built to serve outside Nigeria. ”Today we have clients in fifteen countries
across Africa and we intend to expand. That’s the gap we saw and we took a bold
step to build the plant you have seen. We are currently responsible for the
supply of 13 million high-end, residents’ identity cards from the Lagos State
Government. “Currently we have 215 staff but going to 350 by December 2015.(VANGUARD)
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