More firms to close down over high price of natural gas-MAN

The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has disclosed that more firms were set to shut their operations following the high price and the non supply of natural gas.

Speaking with journalists at the MAN House in Ikeja Lagos, the Chairman of the MAN Gas Users Group, Dr Micheal Ola Adebayo said the issue of high price of natural gas has persisted for some time now and that it has reached a crisis dimension as most factories have stopped production and are about to shut their operations.

“Manufacturers is constrained to draw the attention of the Federal Government and the general public on the issue of persistent increase in the price of natural gas used by manufacturers to power their plants and machinery by the gas franchisers.

“Some of our members are about to shut down their operation due to non-supply of gas to power their operations on the other hand, and the current exorbitant and dollarization pricing of the available ones on the other.

“In fact, some of our factories have been threatened with disconnection on account of their inability to pay for the increase price“, he said.

Adebayo said the growth of the manufacturing sector is currently being hampered with the huge burden of energy crisis caused by power outages and high cost of petroleum products in Nigeria, adding that the incessant increase in the price of gas will not only be punitive but add to the woes of the sector.

According to him, the high cost of the product has led to the high cost of production with energy cost accounting for over 45 per cent of total production cost; reduction in the continue low capacity utilization in the factories; un-competitiveness of all locally produced goods when other infrastructure challenges and unstable policy compliment challenges bedevilling the sector and possible job losses in the country in the future.

The group urge the Federal Government to put in place effective mechanism in order to checkmate the challenges.

His words; “Natural gas should and must be charged in naira and not dollars in line with the original intention and plan of the government that initiated this laudable project.

‘’The Senate and House Committee of Gas should please intervene as was done in the past by their predecessors to prevent a possible collapse of the economy and manufacturing sector in particular. The fact that Shell Petroleum sells gas to NGC at about 9cents, and NGC sells to other franchisers at $2, and the same franchisers sells to manufacturers at $7.38 is more than enough reason to worry”. The group lamented.