Nigerian president calls for more leathergoods production
Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, has called for the country to make better use of its raw materials, saying that the leathergoods industry is not large enough considering the nation’s abundance of hides and skin.
Mr Jonathan spoke at the Northern Economic Summit on 17 March, 2011, stating that the nation’s external reserve has grown from $32 billion as at November 2010 to $36 billion as at the end of February 2011.
“We are an OPEC member, we export crude oil and we import refined petroleum products,” he said. “We are the world’s number one producer of cassava but we import refined starch. We have a large cotton belt stretching from Funtua, Gusau all the way to Biu in the north east and we import textile fabric from China. We have hides and skin and we do not have a leathergoods industry.”
“Our problems started from the abandonment of national economic plans and lack of articulate vision on how to build an economy and when we succumb to something called market forces. We import tomato paste"”
He also said the federal government would partner with the various state governments in the economic development of the country, adding that in this regards, the National Bureau of Statistics is compiling statistics of the gross domestic product in the various states.
