The Federal Government will begin implementation of local content policy and guidelines for the Information Communications Technology (ICT) industry in January 2013.
The policy will make it mandatory for the development of local content in the ICT industry, and aimed at encouraging full participation in the manufacturing industry, as well as sales and purchase of locally developed ICT products from Nigeria.
Minister of Communications Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, gave the hint in Port Harcourt recently, while addressing issues of local content development at a summit organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Local Content.
According to her, development of guidelines and policies had already commenced. These include activities to assess the capacity of the local industry, discussions with offshore companies that are interested in establishing local companies to manufacture devices, the establishment of two pilot ‘government inspired’ Information Technology incubation centres and discussions with the Ministry of Finance and Trade and Investment on the most appropriate import and tax regime.
“We expect that this work will be completed in the next few months and a local content policy and guidelines for the ICT industry announced for implementation commencing January 2013,” she said.
She added that the implementation and success of local content agenda in the ICT industry could only be successful if Nigerians consciously make a choice about buying locally made goods.
According to her, “the local content agenda is premised on a national imperative to ensure that Nigerian companies and Nigerians participate more meaningfully in one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy.”
Addressing key factors in achieving better local content agenda, Johnson stressed the need for import duty regime to favour locally manufactured ICT products in order to encourage local manufacturing, which she said, would stimulate employment opportunities and bring about input of local raw materials.
She however regretted that a number of locally manufactured goods from the ICT industry have a finishing cost that is higher than the same imported goods because the duties on components and imported raw materials are higher than duty on finished products.
“This clearly makes locally manufactured products of the same or even higher quality quite cost uncompetitive, which is inappropriate and must be addressed as soon as possible with the planned implementation of local content policy.”
To ensure that the import duty regime creates a more competitive environment for local manufacturers to promote patronage of local devices, Johnson said government would mandate the production of goods that could be competitively produced or assembled in Nigeria.
“For example, the government white paper on the analogue to digital migration has mandated that all set top boxes required to receive digital signals to analogue television sets after 2015, will be manufactured or assembled in Nigeria. We are already getting foreign and local companies that are expressing strong interest in local assembly to standards and price ranges to be determined by the government,” she said.
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