Textile Industry To Create 2Million Jobs As CBN Revives Sector With N100 billion

Textile industry in Nigeria may be on its way back as the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has announced its plan to revive the sector with about N100billion with the aim of creating additional two million jobs.

 The CBN governor, Godwin Emefile said on Wednesday that the apex bank is looking at injecting N100 billion as its intervention in the Cotton, Textile and Garment, CTG, value chain.

Emefiele stated this  after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, between the National Cotton Association of Nigeria, NACOTAN,, Ginning Companies and Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association and Armed Forces of Nigeria, Nigeria Police, Paramilitary Institutions & National Youth Service Corps  in Abuja.

The bankers’ bank he said has already disbursed about N50 billion to the cotton and ginning components.

The CBN governor who announced the intention of the bank said the new initiative would give opportunity to local players to take control of cotton, textile,  garment industry  and capacity to create more jobs.

 He said, “Already, “approval to a tune of N19.18billion has been granted to finance nine ginneries with a view to retooling their processing plants, while providing them with improved access to finance at single digit interest rate.”

The same support he said will be extended to the textile and garment firms.

He added that the apex bank had invested heavily in local textile and garment factories “to retool and produce assorted uniforms for our uniformed services that meet international standards.”

According to him, “the CBN is improving the linkage between cotton farmers and ginneries, by ensuring that ginneries are able to off-take the high-quality cotton produced by cotton farmers.”

 Emefiele also promised to work with the security agencies, to ensure that the finished uniformed for service personnel and the wastes generated “are treated as currency,” adding that the “highest level of security until they are delivered to the right clients or disposed accordingly.”

Emefiele noted that “production of uniform wears especially for the armed forces calls for high level security concerns in handling, transportation and storage.”

This he added “is to help sustain their operations and improve their production capacity.”

The CBN governor lamented that “smuggling of textiles goods alone is estimated to have cost the nation an import bill of over $4billion annually on textiles and apparel.

The situation according to him has led to a situation where most of the textile factories, all stopped operations and the workforce in Nigeria’s textile industry stands at less than 20,000 people today from about 2 million in the years the industry was doing well.

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