ROTIMI ASHER
The Federal government of Nigeria has been urged to provide key infrastructures and make the auto policy users friendly in order to create more economic value for the country.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he General Manager, Corporate Communications, Coscharis Motors, Obadina Babarinde who gave the advice during the unveiling of Ford Everest held recently at the Federal Palace Hotel, Lagos, said many good things would come with having infrastructures like power and spare parts companies that will help all auto players to deliver desired values.
He said:”Power is very critical element in vehicle manufacturing. Assembling plant is a mini-manufacturing whether it is SKD orCKD or what have you.
“So, all these key infrastructures are taken into consideration before manufacturing. Like you may know, the ultimate objective of every auto dealer is manufacturing. For us as one of the leading auto dealers in the country, we have gone ahead to invest in an assembly plant.
‘’You can imagine if Coscharis alone has other assembly plants in addition to Ford Rangers assembly plant, churning out Ford Everest, another one Ford Figo. The same applies to other auto dealers in the country. That gives multiple opportunities for employment to Nigerians. This will create more economic value into the country.’’
According to him, Coscharis will continue to advocate the need for the nation’s auto policy to be users friendly and practicable.
He added: “All the key elements involved in putting the policy together should be available and accessible. Once we have all these in place and all the vehicles are assembled here, they become cheaper. The economic value to the government also becomes a big deal instead of shipping in everything.
‘’When we are talking about assembly plant, we are talking about a whole lot of parts that come into it from your wiper to your tyres. So all the parts must come handy. If you are assembling, you should be able to pick all these elements around your vicinity instead of shipping them. Shipping everything you are going to assemble will increase the cost and ultimately affect the price of the vehicles. So beyond delivering a vehicle, there are other elements.’’
‘’We are saying the auto policy must be total, a package that if you are assembling the wiper, I am assembling tyres and someone else, bumper; for us as the assembler, it is like picking everything within your location. If you have to ship in everything, it comes at a cost. The bottom line is that we pray and wish the government of the day gives us this auto policy with human face.”
