Market News

Ultimate goal should be for Nigerians to patronise locally-made goods

In a new bid to deepen ongoing economic reforms by protecting domestic industries, boosting local productivity, reducing import dependency and ensuring more efficient foreign exchange management, the Federal Government has released a revised schedule of prohibited trade items. With effect from April 1, the revised import prohibition list covers 17 major categories of commodities across diverse sectors of the economy.

Goods placed under import restrictions in the pharmaceutical sector include paracetamol tablets and syrups, multivitamin capsules, aspirin, folic acid, ointments like penicillin and gentamycin, while the importation of pharmaceutical waste continues to be strictly illegal. In a related vein, items placed under import restrictions in the hygiene sector include all forms of soaps and surface-active products popularly known as detergents.

Wide-ranging import restrictions have also been imposed on commodities in the agriculture and food sectors to boost food security and domestic farming. Items in this category are live or dead birds, including frozen poultry, pork, beef, bird eggs and refined vegetable oils in retail packs of five litres or less. Other goods in this category are soya-bean, palm, and sunflower oils.

Commodities such as cane or beet sugar in retail packs, chemically pure sucrose containing added flavouring or coloring, cocoa powder, cocoa butter,  cakes and chocolate preparations in blocks or bars exceeding two kilogrammes are affected in the retail and consumer goods, as well as cocoa industry categories.

Not excluded are household essentials like tomato paste, whole tomatoes meant for retail sale as well as mineral and aerated waters.

Everyday stationery like ballpoint pens and their refills, bagged cement, different variants of fertilizers, corrugated paper, paper boards and cartons, hollow glass bottles with a capacity above 150 millilitres, flat-rolled products of iron or non-alloy steel as well as corrugated sheets wider than 600 millilitres are also prohibited across the industrial and construction, packaging and other sectors.

It is expected that this targeted import prohibition policy will boost local productivity in the affected sectors, boost employment generation, and reduce pressures on foreign exchange with salutary effects on the value of the Naira and the health of the economy.

The degree of success would however depend on continued sustained efforts to reduce infrastructure deficits, particularly poor electricity supply that reduce the competitiveness of local products against foreign imports.

The government had earlier announced reduced import rates on certain categories of goods also as part of the 2026 fiscal policy measures (FPM) in a bid to “promote and stimulate growth in critical sectors of the economy”. The import tariff reductions affected crude palm oil, anti-malarial medicaments, rice in bulk or packing, broken rice, wheat or Meslin flour, raw cane sugar, railway/tramway locomotives, cargo ships, breathing appliances and gas masks and agriculture/manufacturing machinery.

Also enjoying reduced import tariffs are automatic circuit breakers, vehicles below 2000cc, mass transit buses and electric vehicles. This is obviously aimed at curbing high inflationary spirals in prices of certain essential food and medical necessities as well as transportation costs.

While this is a commendable objective in the short to medium term, the ultimate goal must be to grow local productivity in diverse sectors and reduce import dependency.

The success of the import prohibition policy will fundamentally depend on sustained campaigns to reorientate Nigerians away from ingrained addiction to imported goods even when local alternatives of comparable standard are available, as well as the efficiency of the various security agencies, particularly the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to enforce the restrictions and effectively check smuggling.