President of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Francis Meshioye, has expressed concern over the 1.28 percent year-on-year Gross Domestic Product growth recorded by the manufacturing sector in the second quarter of the year.
The National Bureau of Statistics in its latest GDP report released last week, stated that the 1.28 percent growth recorded by the manufacturing sector indicated a slower growth pace by 0.92 percent when compared with the same quarter of 2023 and by 0.22 percent against the Q1 2024 figure.
Reacting to the report, the MAN President said the slow growth in the manufacturing sector as reported by NBS reflected the dwindling of industrial clusters across the country.
According to him, the Nigerian industrial cluster was dwindling and being overtaken by other businesses.
“Our industrial clusters are being overtaken by other businesses. Businesses in the industrial clusters have dwindled, particularly in Lagos,” he said.
Reviewing the manufacturing sector’s performance in the second quarter of 2024 through its in-house publication, the MAN CEO’s Confidence Index, Q2 2024 report, the association noted that five industrial zones in the quarter under review had low confidence in the Nigerian economy, including Kano (40), Rivers/ Bayelsa (44.7), Bauchi/ Benue/ Plateau (45), Anambra/ Enugu (48.1) Oyo/ Ondo/ Ekiti/ Osun (48.8) with indices less than 50 points.
According to the report more than 700 businesses had closed in the past years and the number was counting as the economic environment became unsuitable.
The MAN president highlighted the impact of the Monetary Policy Rate on manufacturing businesses, and called on the Monetary Policy Committee to refrain from increasing interest rates further in its next meeting.
He said, “I believe that the committee is ever-conscious of the prevailing economic environment and ever-conscious of what we are going through at the individual level and the business level and I am sure that all this will impact their thought processes to design what should be the MPR at the next meeting.”
The NBS reported that the growth of the industry sector was 3.53 percent, an improvement from 1.94 per cent recorded in the second quarter of 2023.
According to the statistics agency, the non-oil sector grew by 2.80 per cent in real terms in Q2 2024, which was lower by 0.78 percent compared to the Q2 2023 growth performance of 3.58 percent, due to financial and insurance, information and communication, agriculture, and trade and manufacturing sectors.
