By Henry Umoru
THE Federal government said on Wednesday that the nation’s industrial sector has since in the 1970s experienced major set backs because they were largely set up on ad-hoc basis without a clearly defined approach with definite targets and timeliness.

The government also warned that if vision 20:2020 must be achieved and Nigeria becoming one of the top world twenty economies, there was the urgent need to put in place a vibrant manufacturing sector capable of coping with the dynamic challenges of an increasingly globalizing world

According to the government, the sector suffered from inefficiencies in the provision of public utilities and exacerbated by the energy crisis, excessive import dependence and poor sectoral linkages, adding that this has in turn led to low capacity utilization, depleted financial base, high production costs, unemployment and general economic decline in the country.

Speaking while inaugurating a Committee for the update and production of the new Strategic, Sector Specific Industrial implementation plan for Nigeria, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Senator Jubril Martins-Kuye noted that there was the need for Nigeria to adopt more stringent policies to increase local value addition to our consumer products, promised that the strategies and principles that will come up at the end of the day, would help redress the stagnation in the industrial sector.

The Committee members will among others produce a new Sector-Specific Detailed Strategic Industrial Implementation Plan for Nigeria to provide a Roadmap for industrial development for ten years (2011-20200), to provide an overview of the industrial landscape in Nigeria detailing the challenges and prospects as well as identify key industrial sectors to be pursued in line with government’s priority focus.

According to him, “the indigenization policy of the early 1970s was more about ownership structure and the desire to stimulate indigenous participation into the ownership of enterprises while the industrial policies and plans put in place subsequently lacked detailed, target-specific and time-specific implementation, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

“In Nigeria, the manufacturing sector lacks competiveness as it is grossly hindered by physical infrastructure, skilled manpower and inadequate power supply among others.