₦airaland Forum

vin4ever: All our Governments do is to seat in the office and dance kukere with Our Financ. . . Oh Naija my Country!

“So, even if ALL the governors of the PDP want to come, they are welcome. APC is a party with large heart.”

Sincere 9gerian: And when those PDP governors or legislators cross over to the APC their sins will be forgiven and they become progressives/performers automatically.
Hypocrites!

Also, the spokesperson for the CPC, Mr. Rotimi Fashakin, told our correspondent that the APC would gladly welcome the PDP governors, adding that it was high time the governors abandoned what he called the “torn umbrella, which can no longer stop the rain.”

Fashakin said, “It is not impossible for the governors to join us. The governor of Niger State, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, just said today (Thursday) that Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) remains his leader and that he is happy at the birth of APC.

“APC is a success story that has come to stay. The governor also added that the formation of the new party would stop all riffraffs from contesting the presidency.

“So, even if all the governors of the PDP want to come, they are welcome. APC is a party with large heart

He told journalists that the fixing of the Nitrogen Plant had paved way for maintenance and streaming of other vital sections of the refinery, including the Catalytic Reforming Unit (CRU) and Naphtha Hydro-treating unit (NHU).

With restreaming of the three critical units, he explained, over 30 per cent capacity would have been recovered to relaunch the entire refinery into full operation.

Ugwu stressed that the quantity of products from the Port Harcourt Refinery would increase by about 30 per cent after the planned turn around maintenance (TAM) and rehabilitation in the year.

AFTER several years of neglect, occasioned by a systemic plan to make the country a perpetual importer of refined petroleum products, hope has been rekindled for the revival of Nigeria’s largest refinery in Elele, near Port Harcourt.

The moribund refinery has two petroleum refining plants. The old one was built in 1965, with installed capacity of 60,000 barrels per day (bpd), enough to meet domestic needs of the country at that time.

The old refinery, built by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), has a crude distillation unit, catalytic reforming unit and Liquefied Petroleum Gas unit, as well as utility unit.

The second refinery, built in 1989, has 150,000 bpd capacity and consists of crude distillation unit, catalytic reforming unit, the fluid catalytic cracking unit and the hydrofluoric (HF), Alkylation unit, with a total refining capacity of the two, being 210,000 bpd.

These two key national assets are presently in sheer state of disrepair due to lack of maintenance and what some key players in the petroleum sector have described as a deliberate and calculated attempt kill the refineries to serve the selfish interest of a few Nigerians.

The Group Executive Director, Refining and Petrochemicals, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Tony Ogbuigwe, had last year at the first international conference on petroleum refining and petrochemicals, organised by the University of Port Harcourt and Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) in Port Harcourt, revealed the schedule for the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the Port Harcourt refinery.

He disclosed that after the award of the contract, the contractor would commence detailed planning and mobilisation of manpower and heavy equipment to the refinery site.

It was expected, according to him, that by next month (February), the refinery would be shut down and formally handed over to the contractor for the TAM to be executed in over 45 days.

And all things being equal, the country’s biggest refinery should be back in operation by April this year.

The Guardian investigation revealed that the federal government has awarded the contract for the TAM to Maire Tecnimont of Italy.

A source at the refinery said the contractor has already visited the refinery and some necessary materials for the overhaul of the plants have been delivered.

According to him, government had initially wanted to award the rehabilitation job to JGC Engineering of Japan, original builders of the refinery, but the company declined due to fear of insecurity in the Niger Delta.

Chairman of Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Magnus Abe, last year blamed the delay of the TAM on the travel advisory issued by the Japanese government.

But the spokesperson of the Japanese embassy in Nigeria, Shinichi Maruo, refuted the allegation.

A top staff of the refinery, who spoke to The Guardian on the basis of anonymity, decried the lack of maintenance of the twin refineries in the last 12 years.

He, however, expressed optimism that unlike in the past, the federal government has demonstrated commitment to fix the moribund refinery this time around.

“We have not started production of petroleum products, but there is hope. The contractor has been engaged and has visited the site. Necessary materials needed for the turn around maintenance have been supplied.

“I can, however, confirm that the physical mobilisation of personnel has not commenced,” he said.

The source explained that preparation for the eventual commencement of the rehabilitation of the refinery was in top gear, saying the determination of government is unprecedented in the past 15 years.

The inability of the refinery to attain its optimal utilisation is primarily due to non-compliance with the TAM schedules.

Furthermore, the refinery has been deviled with serious power problem, as only two of its four installed steam turbines that power the plants have been functional for several years.

Prior to now, the two turbines were supposed to be running at the same time, with the two others on standby, against the current scenario, where only one turbine works at a time.

It would be recalled that Ogbuigwe had disclosed that arrangement for a new captive power supply through gas turbine by an independent power provider had been concluded and a power purchase agreement signed.

According to him, the supply of power to the refinery would commence by March this year, in time to re-stream the plant’s TAM.

The Guardian was reliably informed that one of the major problems affecting the refinery is the delay in fixing the damaged Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) and rotor.

A management staff at the refinery said if the government funds the refineries very well and remove all the bureaucratic bottlenecks, Nigerian engineers could effectively manage them.

He said some of the engineers working at the Eleme Petrochemical plants were recruited from the Port Harcourt Refinery, insisting: “Some of the problems have to do with bureaucracy, approval unit and under-funding.

“The approval unit of the NNPC can only approve contract not exceeding N5 million and if you need to buy equipment worth over a $1 million, that paper must go to the corporate headquarters, from there to the GMD (Group Managing Director), and then to the President.

“Sometimes, before you get the approval, you will find out that the price might have gone up and so you have to write again for variation.”....

Opposition can come together, that is something good for the country because this country needs a formidable and virile opposition. It is necessary for democracy to survive. I don’t want a one-party state for the country. We need at least two, or three strong political parties. I just wish that opposition would come together for the interest of Nigerians and come with manifesto that would putthe government on its toes

Sincere 9gerian: And when those PDP governors or legislators cross over to the APC their sins will be forgiven and they become progressives/performers automatically.
Hypocrites!

Also, the spokesperson for the CPC, Mr. Rotimi Fashakin, told our correspondent that the APC would gladly welcome the PDP governors, adding that it was high time the governors abandoned what he called the “torn umbrella, which can no longer stop the rain.”

Fashakin said, “It is not impossible for the governors to join us. The governor of Niger State, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, just said today (Thursday) that Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) remains his leader and that he is happy at the birth of APC.

“APC is a success story that has come to stay. The governor also added that the formation of the new party would stop all riffraffs from contesting the presidency.

“So, even if all the governors of the PDP want to come, they are welcome. APC is a party with large heart.

Sincere 9gerian: May I appeal to all and sundry to kindly not derail this thread. This thread is about PICTURES and VIDEOS of federal govt projects. The write ups without pictures or video are derailing the thread. I knew the ACN/CPC crew will come here to constitute NUISANCE so I intentionally avoided engaging anyone of them in any argument initially. I slept and woke up only to find arguments back and forth everywhere. It would appear the antics of the ACN/CPC crew is working so far because the thread is already on the 2nd page, mostly due to arguments back and forth.

Pls lets ignore the ACN/CPC crew on this thread. They'll always challenge everything, including peoples name, ID and profession. This thread is for pictures and video. There are several other threads where we can do the arguments and the haters will be DEMOLISHED as usual.

KnowAll: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If d road is that good how come an in -coming truck is seen driving against d traffic as captioned above, (see picture above, obviously there is something not right ).

taharqa: One of those Interventions Funds, amongst others, that this Admin have successfully managed and that have had some REAL impact on the target Investors, for those people saying that this may not be realized (this one is on the Extremely important Textile sector; hopefully):





We can however keep the Govt on their toes to make sure that this particular Intervention works, while people should take advantage of it.

Jeboy: Dat is how it is with most of us here, we castigate and critisize govt but if given a budget of 5million Naira we will throw away caution. Seems its a Nigerian problem of greed and financial indiscipline.So what's d way out?

Following two years of operation of the N100bn intervention fund, the Textiles, Cotton and Garment subsector appears to be regaining breath, LAYI ADELOYE reports

Stakeholders in the Nigerian Cotton, Textile and Garment subsector have assessed th performance of the N100bn intervention fund given to the industry two years ago, submitting that it has revived operations.

They, however, called on the Federal Government to make available to the sector an intervention fund of about N1n, in view of the current economic reality that has made the initial N100bn seed fund inadequate.

Similarly, they called for a longer tenor rate on the repayment of the loans in order to aid the growth and development of the sector.

The operators also commended the Bank of Industry for its painstaking approach to the fund’s management, mobilisation and disbursement, which, according to them, resulted in the revival of the once comatose subsector.

Meanwhile, the bank has said that about 60 per cent of the N100bn initial intervention fund offered by the government had been disbursed to the sector in the last two years.

All these came out at a validation workshop organised by the Bank of Industry, in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, in Abuja, on Tuesday.

In 2010, the Federal Government introduced a N100bn Cotton Textile and Garment Revival Scheme, managed by the Bank of Industry to reverse this ugly trend of progressive industry collapse and ensure a rapid resuscitation and upgrading of the entire CTG value-chain.

Two years down the line, the subsector’ stakeholders appraised the funds’ performance, saying substantial portion of the fund had been successfully disbursed to beneficiaries, with the impact emerging “very encouraging.”

Recent figures from the Manufacturer’s Association of Nigeria revealed that the capacity utilisation in this subsector has increased tremendously, from 29.14 per cent in 2010 to 49.70 per cent in 2011. In addition, a number of hitherto moribund textile mills have been reopened, with about 8,070 jobs saved, just as over 5,000 new jobs have been created.

The Minister of Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, recalled the developments in the subsector, stressing that the subsector had gone through ups and downs since 1960 but had just started getting some reprieve through the intervention funds.

He said, “Nigeria’s Cotton, Textile and Garment Industry was a leading sector in the economy from the 1960s through to the 1970s, and in the early 1980s, when the industry had about 175 textile mills and employed over 600,000 workers making it the second largest employer of labour, after the government.

“Unfortunately, however, by 2008, the Textile factories still in operation had reduced to 24 textile mills and 10 ginneries employing less than 25,000 people, and with exports less than $50m.

According to him, among the factors that led to the decline in the sector include but not limited to massive influx of textiles and apparels from Asia particularly after the Multi Fibre Agreement expired in 2005; inadequate and epileptic energy supply and heavy reliance on self-generation of power, leading to high and uncompetitive production costs; global economic challenges; massive smuggling of cheaper textiles of lower quality; changing consumer tastes and habits; and huge debt burden on producers in the value chain amongst others.

He said the subsector held strong potential due to its natural cotton endowments, large market size and legacy sector knowledge.

He explained, “Nigeria’s population of over 167 million people represents a natural market for basic textiles and apparel related goods. Potential to export to regional and select developed markets (such as the United States, under the African Growth and Opportunities Agreement tariff regime) are also very attractive.

“The existing textile infrastructure and skill base provides the industry with a pool of knowledgeable workforce particularly in Northern Nigeria. The above make this sector too important for government to ignore.

Aganga said the evaluation of the socio-economic impact of the Fund to the beneficiaries and the national economy at large could, therefore, not have come at a better time.

“Although, it is evident that the CTG Revival Fund Scheme has provided the industry players with a unique source of incentive-based long-term fund for the financing and refinancing of capital investments and revolving working capital, based on my interactions with some of you and my findings during my visits to your factories, I am not unaware of other challenges being faced by you.”

The Chief Executive Officer of BoI, Ms Evelyn Oputu, said there was the need for a line of credit to be opened for the resuscitation of companies in the textile industry, in view of the fact that it remained a key sector generating a high number of jobs in the country.

She noted that the bank and other agencies were doing a mid-term evaluation of the Cotton, Textile and Garment Scheme in a bid to examine the progress made and other areas of concern.

According to her, BoI has disbursed nearly 60 per cent of the N100bn allotted to the textile sector to revive it, but hopes to increase funding to the sector, if empowered.

The Country Representative, UNIDO, Patrick Kormawa, advocated the need for an improved investment climate, effective policies for the real sector and enhanced capacity building for operators in order to aid the growth of the sector.

He identified the lack of adequate machinery and manpower as challenges the growth of the real sector. He, therefore, called for a renewed effort to revitalise the subsector.

[b]The General Secretary, National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers, Isa Aremu, commended the government for the intervention effort in the textile sector, noting that though it came late, it was better as many firms had been revived.

He said, “When the textile industry was still vibrant, a single firm could generate about 10,000 jobs. However, due to the intervention fund, we have been able to revive some firms. There is a need for an accelerated growth in the sector and this can be achieved through increased funding to the sector.

“Presently, 58 companies are managing N10bn, while AMCON has spent about N5.6tn on rescued banks. This gesture can also be replicated in the real sector if the desired growth and employment generation will be achieved.”

He, therefore, urged BoI to increase the tenor rate for loans sought by firms in the real sector in order to aid attractiveness of the loans to the companies and foster development.

“A drop in interest rates for the real sector will foster its growth. I believe we can work towards a zero per cent interest rate if we set our mind towards it”, he added.

On efforts to encourage the subsector’s development, he said, “We are working through the Standards Organisation of Nigeria, to reduce the dumping of sub-standard goods into the country.

“Some of these goods include textiles and apparels. We are also exploring diplomatic channels through our Trade Ambassador at the World Trade Organisation. To ensure increase in power supply, we are working with the Ministry of Power to ensure 10 industrial cities in the country have, at least, 18 hours of uninterrupted power supply by first quarter of next year (2013).

He added, “Our aspiration for the textile and apparel industry is to increase its domestic market share from its present position of 12 per cent to 25 per cent by 2020. We also expect this sector to create over 60,000 direct jobs within this period.

“To achieve this, the strategic thrust requires reviving the entire value chain. This includes strengthening the base by boosting cotton production for use in the domestic sector and potential exports, supporting existing players to expand their current operations and attracting strong brands to set up local manufacturing operation in the country. This explains why we have included the sector in the Industrial Revolution Plan which is being[/b]

http://www.punchng.com/business/industry/comatose-textiles-cotton-subsector-regains-breath/

egregous: New record soon

Akshow: I dont even need to read all these before i know and believe that all what she accused Jonathan of is true. I hope by the next polls we will be wise enough to put sentiments and tribal affiliations aside when votin

Prof Corruption: Jobless growth, faceless investors, clueless president. Which is better?