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- A new report put together by Prof. Okey Iheduru of the Arizona State University showed that the annual capacity utilization of the auto plants in Nigeria had dropped by 97 percent, from 500,000 vehicles to just 15,000 vehicles.
- The Chief Economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers Limited, Dr. Andrew Navin, who noted that the auto industry was still dominated by used cars imports more than two years after the introduction of a new auto policy, also said local production accounted for only one percent of the market.
- Iheduru, who gave the installed capacity for the over 40 existing auto assembly plants in the country as 500,000 cars annually, said the firms could only utilize less than three percent of that capacity.
- Navin, in his presentation, also said the NAIDP, which was introduced to reduce the nation’s dependence on automobile imports and stimulate investment in local manufacturing, had not been able to do well as continued depreciation in the value of naira and foreign exchange crisis had led to increases in the prices of new vehicles.
- “Despite increased activity in the auto industry, vehicle ownership is low (in Nigeria) compared to other African countries,” he said. According to him, vehicle production figures for the last year showed that South Africa did 615,658 vehicles; Morocco, 288,329; Egypt, 36,000; Algeria, 20,000; and Nigeria, 3,500.
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