The manufacturing sector is losing foreign investments, as an 87 per cent gap in 27 months betrays an unattractive industry.
Stakeholders say that only stable macroeconomic conditions can cause a rebound, Arinze Nwafor writes.
The gap between foreign capital inflows into Nigeria’s manufacturing sector and the national total has widened to alarming levels, deepening concerns about the sector’s attractiveness to investors.
An analysis of the National Bureau of Statistics capital importation data from 2023 to the first quarter of 2025 shows that manufacturing attracted $2.85bn in foreign investment over the 27 months, representing just 13.02 per cent of the $21.87bn total.
This left a gap of 87 percentage points between manufacturing inflows and the national (total) figure.
Analysts, including the former president of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, Segun Ajibola, told The PUNCH that the widening gap between the total capital imported and the productive/manufacturing sector’s share shows that “nothing much is happening in the manufacturing sector because of the perennial challenges.”
