MAN Seeks More Involvement of Local Firms
Oil Sector
By Mike Oduniyi and Gloria Achoyamen
Manufacturers Associa-tion of Nigeria (MAN) said it had begun moves to get local companies more involved in project execution in the upstream sector of the Nigerian petroleum sector.
MAN President, Engineer Charles Ugwuh, who anno-unced this in Abuja at the weekend, said the group has evolved strategies, in collaboration with the National Local Content Committee, as a road map to achieving the objective.
Ugwu, who spoke at the stakeholders seminar on Nigerian Content Develop-ment Bill, said the two parties have agreed to adopt among other guidelines:
identifying products of MAN sectoral groups
oil majors to submit to MAN, the list of items used or required by oil companies
identify MAN sectoral group relevant to the oil industry
ensure implementation of policy of patronage of made-in-Nigeria products by oil companies
oil companies to forward to MAN, the list of their international contractors with a view to have some strategic alliance with them to produce locally, and
regular consultaions with MAN with a view to assessing the enhancement programme.
According to the MAN president, while the National Local Content Committee has set a target of achieving 40 percent local content in the upstream oil and gas industry in 2005 and 60 percent in 2010, "MAN sees this as a tall order."
"A very pertinent question also begs for answers, and that is, how prepared are Nigerian manufacturers?" Ugwu said.
He stated that in view of the importance attached to content usage, MAN council had approved the setting up of an Oil and gas sectoral group, which will administer activities on local content in the sector while identifying all stakeholders (sub-sector) in MAN as well as oil and gas service companies/contractors and engineering firms outside MAN who may be considered for affiliation to the group.
Uwgu said the group was also in partnership with INTSOK Constants of Norway, to use the group as Nigeria's focal point for identifying and training Base Metal Fabricator to ISO standard.
The objective he said, was to improve enhance the capacity of the Nigerian fabricators.
"MAN is using this opportunity to appeal to all Nigerian oil companies to fund this project to enable Nigeria fabricators benefit from this capacity building programme, which will assist in upgrading the current low status of local fabricators," Ugwu said.
Official data puts local inputs in oil projects at just five percent of the total $8.0 billion annual expenditure.
The MAN president said factors responsible for this situatuation include inconsistency in government policies, inadequate infrastructure, lack of adequate tariff protection for local manufacturers to make them competitive and low technological base.
Others are lack of adequate legislation, and inadequate access to finance.
To address the problem, Ugwu said future operating companies should be made to invest in local production through legislation and also to develop a viable local content policy for the stream sector tailored towards enhancing creation of jobs wealth and sustainable industrial growth.
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