Strong indications show that the Federal Government loose an average of N1.5 billion on daily basis from the Aba based apparel manufacturers and exporters.
Aba, a business nerve in Abia State houses about 200,000 manufacturers of various leather products including shoes and bags as well as those in fashion and garment making.
Speaking to Financial Standard on an exclusive interview recently Mr. Ken Anyanwu, national secretary, association of leather and allied industrials of Nigeria (Alin), an umbrella body housing all workers of the leather and allied industries in Nigeria said that due to poor export activity tracking, that leather products manufactured in Aba are being exported on daily basis without any record by the government. He said that at least a million pairs of shoes or bags valued at an averagely at of N1,500 per one are exported to various West African countries including those of East Africa on daily basis.
"Go to Milverton or Ariaria market here in Aba, you find loads of shoes and bags both of high quality and those of lower qualities being purchased in very high volumes. I am telling you that to be very conservative; at least a million pairs go out everyday. Manufacturers do the production and within 24 hours thousands of shoes and made so when you add all the shoes and bags produced everyday in Ariaria, you can believe with me that one million is even an understatement, Anyanwu said.
He said that the process of documentation of export which was introduced to the manufacturers was very cumbersome as it involves traveling out of the traders' domain to do. According to him, the manufacturers are not ready to engage on that given that their buyers come to their shops to carry the goods.
Anyanwu admitted that both high qualities and lower qualities are made in Aba with the lower quality products produced more than the good ones.
"We produce both qualities but the rate at which the lower qualities are sold is very high so producers tend to manufacture more of these as their demand is higher."
Linking to what had induced the manufacturers go for lower qualities, he said that the only tannery in Kano-Fata Tanery Epz which chiefly was supplying leather to the local manufacturers had been bought by the Chinese. They now export the leather to China and other parts of the world leaving us to re-import the leather which they had exported to Europe to Nigeria. This has made the cost of good local leather works very high," he said.
"These leather products they export are of three grades. There are grades one and two which are for the export market and condemn grade which they were selling to us but after the tannery was bought over by a Chinese company, getting supplies became difficult because the Chinese have their local industries to be fed from the leather they produce here," Anyanwu added.
He said that his association is left with the only option of importing cheap synthetic leather from China for lower quality shoes and bags and high quality leather from Italy for expensive good quality shoes and bags.
Anyanwu called on the government to come in and streamline the activities of traders in Aba as while the traders are struggling with the problem of inadequate infrastructure the government on the other hand is loosing taxes and trade data.
