Thursday, September 15,
2016
Engineers have urged
the Federal Government to encourage the local building of machine tools as a
strategy to exit the economic recession.
The President of the
Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Otis Anyaeji, who made the appeal in Abuja
at the inauguration of the Nigerian Society of Safety Engineers (NISE)
executives, explained that the local manufacturing of machine tools represents
a quick way to check the economic situation.
Anyaeji said, "The
automotive sector has the linkages with other sectors that government should
encourage people to go into. If we want to grow the economy in a sustainable
manner, the country must immediately make huge investments in the machine tools
sector.
"This is the
sector that makes machines for other sectors. For sometimes now, our economy
has been inactive which literarily means negative growth. Nigeria can escape
from the negative growth when the economy becomes active especially in the
productive areas."
He said government must
begin to get the people involved in the manufacturing of what Nigerians
consume.
The NSE boss explained
that with the huge deficit of housing in Nigeria, government should encourage
builders to embark on massive building, owing to its multi-layer economic
benefits.
He said one thing that
Nigeria must take very seriously is housing. It is believed that when a
country's housing sector is active, such a country would never get into
recession. The reason for that assertion is because of the linkage of inputs
into housing.
Anyaeji hinted that the
NSE is already talking to government via the ministries of industry, trade and
investment, transportation and power, works and housing regarding the projects
that would be built with the loan that Nigeria is seeking to obtain from the
Chinese government.
The NSE helmsman said
that while the NSE is not against borrowing by government, efforts must be made
to ensure clauses that would translate into cogent and speedy development of
the nation's infrastructure are inserted in the agreements.
He said: "We have
made it very clear to government that there is the need to create a
manufacturing sector that will manufacture the entire infrastructure that would
be needed in the execution of the projects. What that means is that government
should look for investment into the manufacturing sector.
"Government should
make it a matter of policy to insert into all the agreements to obtain loan
that the materials needed for execution of projects would be sourced within
Nigeria. The society is convinced that toeing this line would speed up the process
of exiting the economic recession Nigeria is presently going through."
Chairman of the
Nigerian Institutions of Safety Engineers (NISE), Abiodun Oyedepo, said the
association would soon unveil safety codes that are aimed at boosting the
safety of projects.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN