Revamping economy with the textile industry

A major Dutch textile and design company, Vlisco Group, was recently in the country to invest in the cotton, textile and garment industry in Nigeria. Towards this end, the leader of the Dutch company and Vlisco’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Mr. David Suddens, held a high level discussion with Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, on the company’s proposed investments in the cotton, textile and garment industry in Nigeria.
He said Vlisco group will boost growth and jobs in Nigeria across the entire value chain from cotton to fashion industry. The group will participate across the value chain from sourcing of cotton, textile printing, wholesale, retail and e-commerce distribution, garment manufacturing and training of Nigerian fashion designers.
This end- to -end investment in the textile industry, from sourcing cotton to retail will yield benefits to the economy in terms of economic diversification and job creation. In short, Vlisco’s group envisaged that at least, their investment will create 10,000 jobs. The group will also set up a Vlisco textile printing factory in Nigeria using Nigeria’s designs for the Nigerian consumers. Nigerian retail outlets will sell Vlisco’s products while trained Nigerian tailors will sew Vlisco’s fabric into garments.
Vlisco’s delegation, coming a few months after a Turkish firm went into partnership with the Kaduna Textile Mills and the New Nigeria Development Company in collaboration with the Federal Government to invest $15 million to reactivate the collapsed Kaduna Textile Company, is a welcome development. The moves by the two foreign textile companies are in line with President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s policy of resuscitating the textile industry, among others, to provide more job opportunities in the country.
The Kaduna textile company was started in 1956 in Kaduna to process the cotton being produced in the northern part of the country. Many other textile companies later sprang up in Lagos and between Kaduna and Kano axis. By the 1970s and the early 1980s, the Nigerian textile industry had grown to become the third largest in Africa, employing well over 400,000 Nigerians across the country.
Unfortunately, the oil boom of the 1970s and the early 1980s which increased the purchasing power of the government and the citizens led to the neglect of agriculture and many vital industries, particularly the textile industry, thus crippling other sectors of the economy and putting the economic viability of the country in serious jeopardy. Consequently, the textile industry suffered neglect and by 2002 the Kaduna Textile Mill closed with more than 7,000 of its workers sent home.
Today, the textile industry employs less than 30,000 workers with the factories operating either below capacity or totally closed and most of their plants in operational
distress.
In 2010, the Bank for Industry attempted to revive the textile industry by approving N10 billion as textile revival fund. The fund increased capacity utilisation in the industry from 29.14 per cent to the current 50 per cent. In reviving the industry this time around the government must also focus on the production of cotton, kenaf and other raw materials that are associated with the textile industry.
In revitalising the textile industry, the Federal Government has put in place the cotton, textile and garment policy. It has also directed that uniforms of military and para-military personnel as well as uniforms for many public schools students should, henceforth, be produced and purchased locally. With this policy in place and, if the prices are right, governments in the Economic Community Of West African States sub-regional market will patronise Nigerian textile industry.
Going forward, government’s current intervention in the industry must be proactive, effective and sustained so that the local textile industry can thrive and flourish again. In the past, poor power supply and high interest rates on borrowed funds escalated the cost of production of local textile mills. This time around, the government must ensure improved power supply across the country so as to lower the cost of production
for the textile mills, while the government should create intervention funds through the Central Bank of Nigeria as alternative to loans from commercial banks which attract high interest
rates.