- Exhibitors and investors at the just-concluded “Nigeria Pharma Manufacturers Expo 2015’’ have said that the recent foreign exchange restriction policy had impacted negatively on their production.
- They spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) at the end of the three days exhibition on Sunday in Lagos.
- Recall that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had on June 23, stopped the sale of foreign exchange to importers of rice, private jets, textiles, tomato paste, poultry products and 35 other times.
- This direction is to beef up the fast depleting external reserves and facilitate the resuscitation of domestic industries as well as generate employment.
- According to a foreign exhibitor from China, Mr Fan Guangyu, the foreign exchange market remained a big barrier to marketing of his products.
“We have come to display our products here, some of our products are assembled here locally, but the market is generally becoming slow, maybe because of the price.
The main issue is the currency barrier, the exchange of our local currency to dollars, then the conversion to naira is cumbersome, and this has brought a lot of cost implications.
Although, the market is huge, there is no raw material here, so we have to resort to buying and importing,’’ said Guangyu who produces Zhejiang Medicines and Health Products”
- In his remarks, another exhibitor, Mr Gauran Manhas, a fabricator of pharmaceutical machines and equipment, said that most of the locally made drug machines might not meet the international standards.
“I think the major problem with some fabrications in Nigeria is that they are not made in line with the international standards.
Some of the fabricated machines being used for food processing in Nigeria are not hygienic enough, so we decided to produce these products that can meet the international standards in China.
We have good response from the Nigerian market. It is very promising because people are buying our products, we also produce our spare-parts locally here and technicians are available.
We plan to have a factory to assemble the equipment here in the future,’’ he said.
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