The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday inaugurated Textile Revival and Implementation Committee (TRIC) to revamp the Cotton, Garment and Textile (CGT) sector in the country.
The CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele while inaugurating the committee in Abuja, said all stakeholders in the country must work together to revive the sector.
TBI Africa said the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the inauguration was witnessed by Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State, Jigawa State Deputy Governor, Ibrahim Hassan and Kaduna State Deputy Governor, Bala Barnabas.
Emefiele explained that in the past 20 years, the sector had been in comatose and CBN would do everything possible with other stakeholders to revive it and reclaim the lost glory of the nation.
He said the sector had been faced with a lot of challenges like low cotton production, poor infrastructure such as power and transport, smuggling and dumping of textile materials and poor access to finance.
According to him, counterfeiting, inadequate local patronage, poor high cost of production and multiple taxation are other challenges that have been facing the sector.
He said the CBN would continue to provide leadership, power hubs to CTG companies and create cotton production nationwide.
Emefiele pledged to work with relevant stakeholders to eradicate smuggling of textile materials to the country.
He said already, the bank had engaged 100,000 cotton farmers to cultivate 100,000 hectares of cotton for the 2019 season.
He noted that CBN was committed to resuscitating the sector as timeline had been set to achieving this.
“I am appealing to all stakeholders to work with us to reclaim our country and everybody must play a role.
” We will make sure we involve all major stakeholders because no important agency relevant to this has been excluded.
“I am a Nigerian, my children are Nigerians, I feel concern, how do you feel when you go to Kano, foreigners have dominated our markets, selling smuggling textile materials and making a lot of money.
” We must work together to stop this and history will be kind to us as we pursue to reclaim our textile industry,” he said.
Ganduje commended the CBN governor for taking the right step in the right direction.
He said he was happy that Emefiele started from the bottom, by ensuring the cultivation of cotton by the farmers.
He advised CBN to take every process in the sector seriously without missing any step otherwise, failure would be recorded.
The governor said, to get it right again, strong institutions and good management team are required for the success of this plan to revive the industry.
The Kaduna deputy governor, Barnabas said that his state was the worst hit in the collapse of textile industry because it hosted a lot of textile companies in the past.
He pledged on behalf of the government to give necessary support to the committee towards revamping the sector.
The Jigawa deputy governor, also advised the committee to ensure that the production chain was right by ensuring quality cottons.
He said the committee should ensure that what ever farmers produced would be used by textile companies otherwise the effort would be in futility.
NAN reports that the members were drawn from CBN, five states involved in the production of cotton, Ministries of Power, Water Resources, Finance and Nigeria Customs Service.
