THE Managing Director of National Trucks Manufacturers NTM Limited, Kano, Mr. Ibrahim Bayero, has said that his company would have no option than to dump the assembling of vehicles in their plant for finished imported vehicle if the duty differentials between fully built vehicles and locally produced ones do not change.

Presently the duty differential for trucks and buses is only five per cent while that of cars is 15 per cent.

Mr. Bayero also identified the non patronage of local assembly plant as another factor that could make them lay off staff and join the brandwagon of companies who engage in the more profitable importation of cars.

The managing director who hinted that his company presently has over 350 Nigerians working in the assembly plant said that it will be more profitable for the company to import vehicles from abroad than continuing to assemble without government patronage and negligible tariff on vehicles from abroad.

“If the situation continues as it is, we will stop production, layoff over 350 staff on our payroll and turn into a trading company like others which is more profitable. It will be more profitable for us to import and sell fully built vehicles with staff strength of 20 staff while sacking over 300 staff on our payroll,” he said.

The NTM boss cautioned that there was a limit to which they could carry on with the assembly plant given the operational environment.

For instance, he said that in one year alone, the company had a turnover of N4 billion  and still made a loss of N1 billion.

Lamenting their predicament, he said that government agencies had always ignored the president’s directive mandating them to patronise locally assembled vehicles by importing vehicles from abroad thereby denying the local auto assembly plants the opportunity of keeping their plants busy throughout the year.

Bayero noted that the success of the assembly plant means success to the Kano State Government when earns tax from the company and employ Nigerian youths who ordinarily would have been unemployed.

NTM was created in December 1975 as a joint venture between the Federal Government and Fiat of Italy with installed capacity of 7,000 trucks and 3,000 tractors.

It had its peak output in 1981 when it produced 3,183 vehicles (31.8 % installed capacity) and low point in 1986 when it produced 212 trucks (2.1 per cent capacity) before it closed down in 1986.

It was later privatised in 2003 through the sales of federal government sales and the core investors were Art Engineering and Construction Limited (75%) while Kano, Jigawa and Sokoto State governments shared the remaining 25%  shares.

The plant presently produces light duty trucks 2 to 5 tons, medium and heavy duty trucks 8 to 40 turns as well as pickup, SUVs, buses and agricultural tractors with implements.

The company’s technical partners are Great Wall, CNHTC, Jinan Flybo (Qingqi) YTO tractors and Jinbei Motors.

At present it has three assembly lines, spare parts store, bonded warehouse, and finished goods warehouse.

However, the managing director said that if Nigeria could take its auto industry seriously, it had the potentials and capacity to become a giant in the auto industry and cover the entire auto needs of West African countries.

Although he said at inception the NTM was conceived as an assembly plant that would later transform into an manufacturing plant, but the company has not been able to grow to achieve this mark in more than 30 years.

“Today we are in 2011 and looking at Vision 2020, yet we have not been able to meet with Vision 1975, (when NTM was created)”. He noted that in the 1980s, the auto industry was thriving but we have not been able to learn from our past.