Vice President Osinbanjo has said that the country’s leather industry has the potential to generate over 1 billion dollars by 2025.
VP Osinbajo disclosed this at the formal inauguration and sensitisation workshop on the National Leather and Leather Products Policy Implementation Plan on Tuesday in Abuja.
The vice president said leather value chain had created wealth and appreciable job opportunities in Nigeria.
“Nigeria is one of the highest producers of leather and finished leather products in Africa; a study carried out by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) projected that the Nigerian leather industry has the potential to generate over 1 billion dollars by 2025.
“The leather value chain is extensive; it includes animal husbandry, tanneries, finished leather products and leather products marketing.
“The leather and leather products industry currently employs over 750,000 workers with about 500,000 workers in the finished leather goods sector.
“About eleven leather exporting companies have been active at the upstream end of the leather value chain; together, these companies generate about 8000 jobs.’’
He said that the export of leather had grown steadily reaching a peak of 117 million dollars in 2018 but fell in 2020 largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Osinbajo said that Nigeria’s leather products and value chain had immense potential and attracted huge international patronage.
According to him, there is clearly an enormous potential for greater job opportunities and much higher export proceeds.
He said that the NESG projection also indicated that the Nigerian leather industry had the potential to increase its earnings by 70 per cent by 2025.
He said that the plan provided an opportunity to develop a credit guarantee scheme along the lines of the successful agricultural credit guarantee scheme.
Osinbajo said that more intentional infrastructure development had become possible.
He said that a central feature of the plan was the development of technical capacity in leather works and technology.
The vice president said that Nigerian Institute of Leather Science and Technology (NILEST), the arrowhead of the plan, had established nine extension centres across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria.
Earlier in a keynote address, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu, the Minister of Science and Technology, said the plan would help the effective and efficient exploitation of Nigeria’s natural resources.
Onu said that the plan would make the country self-reliant, enhance earning of foreign exchange as well as creating jobs and wealth. (NAN)
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