*Drag ministers into battle

By Omoh Gabriel & Henry Umoru

The minister of Commerce, Jubril Martins Kuye, and his Finance counterpart,Olusegun Aganga, have been dragged into the raging war between Cement manufacturers and importers with the former accusing the two ministers of being enticed with mouth watering largesse to reverse Federal Government’s policy, which targets the protection of local manufacturers of the essential commodity.

Just last week the Federal Government inaugurated a monitoring committee on the implementation of backward integration policy in the cement sub-sector.

Inaugurating the Committee in Abuja, Minister of Commerce and industry, Senator Jibril Martins-Kuye noted that the move was part of government’s effort to address the problem associated with the supply of cement in the country, stating that the government approved the constitution of the committee to ensure transparency and more importantly guarantee full implementation of the backward integration policy in the sub-sector.

The Minister, who urged members of the committee to help refocus and strengthen the ideals of the sub-sector to dedicate themselves to the successful execution of its clearly defined tasks, however, asked them to put in their individual and collective ideas to the assignment geared towards ensuring self sufficiency in local production of cement in the shortest possible time.

The committee, according to the Minister, was expected to ascertain the level of compliance of all investors in the cement industry to backward integration policy of government, to verify the design capacity of all cement manufacturing plants, including on-going cement projects, and to recommend the measure that would guarantee stability and reduction in the market price of cement.

Martin-Kuye explained that the committee had equal representatives from the already established manufacturing companies as well as importers that had initiated moves to establish integrated cement plants, some key government agencies critical to the growth of cement as members.

Other terms of reference of the committee included: To ascertain the actual production capacities of all cement plants (manufacturing and terminal operation), to verify the extent of performance of bulk cement importers (terminal operation) in the execution of import licence granted to them, to examine and evaluate the impact of the current cement policy in all ramifications and to suggest and recommend any measure that will accelerate the attainment of self sufficiency in cement production in Nigeria in the short, medium and long terms.