Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has stated that the value of Nigeria’s leather exports could reach over $1 billion by 2025.
The Vice President disclosed this on Tuesday at the inauguration and sensitisation workshop on the National Leather and Leather Products Policy Implementation Plan.
What Vice President Osinbajo said
Osinbajo said, “Nigeria is one of the highest producers of leather and finished leather products in Africa; a study carried out by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) projected that the Nigerian leather industry has the potential to generate over 1 billion dollars by 2025.
The leather value chain is extensive; it includes animal husbandry, tanneries, finished leather products and leather products marketing.
The leather and leather products industry currently employs over 750,000 workers with about 500,000 workers in the finished leather goods sector.
About eleven leather exporting companies have been active at the upstream end of the leather value chain; together, these companies generate about 8000 jobs.’’
He added that the export of leather had grown, reaching a peak of 117 million dollars in 2018 but fell in 2020 largely due to the pandemic, though admitting an immense potential in Nigeria’s leather production value chain.
“To date, however, exports are in the order of 272 million dollars; today, Nigeria’s semi-finished and finished leather have their highest patronage in Italy, Spain, India, South Asia and China.
Shoes, belts, bags and folders are largely traded in West Africa and many parts of Africa,” he added.
He added that one of the reasons for launching the National Leather and Leather Products Policy Implementation Plan is related to NESG forecasts that the Nigerian leather industry had the potential to increase its earnings by 70% by 2025.
A major part of that effort is improving access to credit for leather products manufacturers.
Our Special Economic Zones (SEZ) project already projected leather products manufacturing as a major focus; synergy and collaboration with Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) was all required at present,” he said.
-Nairametric
