Textile import ban threatens N17tn fashion, furniture industries – CPPE

The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has warned that the Senate’s resolution calling for a ban on textile fabric imports could undermine industries worth an estimated N17 trillion and threaten millions of jobs across Nigeria.

The Senate had asked the Federal Government to impose an outright ban on the impor-tation of foreign textile materials as part of efforts to revive Nigeria’s struggling textile in-dustry and stimulate local cotton production.

The upper chamber also urged the Federal Government, through the Ministries of Agri-culture and Trade and Investment, to take urgent steps to resuscitate textile manufactur-ing across the country, particularly along the Kaduna-Kano industrial corridor, citing its potential to create jobs and address rising youth unemployment and insecurity.

The resolutions followed the adoption of a motion titled ‘Urgent need to revive the textile industries in Nigeria with particular reference to the Kaduna-Kano Axis’, sponsored by Senator Sunday Katung (APC, Kaduna South) and co-sponsored by several lawmakers across party and regional lines.

But the Chief Executive Officer of the CPPE, Dr. Muda Yusuf, said while the objective of reviving the country’s textile industry was commendable, an outright import ban would do more harm than good by disrupting larger downstream industries that depend on imported fabrics.

“The proposed measure is unlikely to achieve its intended objectives and could have significant adverse consequences for the Nigerian economy,” Yusuf said in a statement on Saturday.

According to him, Nigeria’s fashion, garment-making and tailoring industry alone is conservatively valued at about N10 trillion and provides livelihoods for an estimated 10 million Nigerians, making it one of the country’s largest creative economy sectors.

“Textile fabrics are critical intermediate inputs for this ecosystem. Restricting imports would disrupt production, increase costs, reduce consumer choice and threaten thou-sands of micro, small and medium enterprises engaged in fashion, tailoring and gar-ment manufacturing,” he said.

Yusuf noted that the sector creates substantial domestic value through design, tailoring, branding, embroidery, merchandising and retailing, arguing that “in many cases, the local value added exceeds the value of the textile inputs.”

He added that textile fabrics are equally indispensable to Nigeria’s furniture and interior design industry, estimated to be worth about N7 trillion.

“The industry relies extensively on fabrics for upholstered furniture, office furniture, ho-tel furnishings and mattresses. A supply disruption would increase production costs and weaken the competitiveness of the sector,” he said.

The CPPE chief argued that the decline of Nigeria’s textile manufacturing industry stems more from structural challenges than import competition.

“The challenge confronting Nigeria’s textile industry is fundamentally one of competi-tiveness rather than import penetration,” Yusuf said.

He identified high energy costs, expensive credit, poor infrastructure, logistics bottle-necks, obsolete technology, smuggling and inconsistent government policies as the major constraints facing local textile manufacturers.

According to him, imported textile fabrics already attract combined Import Duty and Im-port Adjustment Tax of between 35 and 45 per cent, yet the industry has not become competitive because “the core problem lies in production economics rather than import penetration.”

“An import ban addresses the symptom while leaving the underlying causes unre-solved,” he said.

Yusuf stressed that domestic textile manufacturers currently lack the capacity to meet the quantity, quality and variety of fabrics required by Nigeria’s fashion, garment, interior design and furniture industries.

“An outright import ban would therefore create supply shortages, increase production costs and weaken downstream industries that generate significantly more employment than textile manufacturing itself,” he warned.

Instead of imposing import restrictions, the CPPE urged the government to adopt measures that improve industry competitiveness, including reviving cotton production, providing affordable long-term finance, lowering energy costs, modernising production technology, strengthening border enforcement against smuggling and leveraging gov-ernment procurement to support local textile manufacturers.

“Sustainable revival will require structural reforms that improve productivity, reduce production costs, revive cotton production, expand access to affordable finance and leverage government procurement to stimulate domestic demand,” Yusuf said.

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