National Economic Summit Group has said that despite the numerous opportunities in the manufacturing sector, only N5.73trillion ($15.87billion) has been invested in the sector in the last eight years.
NESG said this in its 2021 Macroeconomic report. It stated that for foreign direct investments, the gap between announced investment and actual investment points to the low confidence level of investors in the real sector.
According to the report, the COVID-19 pandemic also led to a larger trade deficit in the manufacturing sector, which stood at N11.76trillion in 2020.
It added that as of 2020, three of the thirteen sub-sectors accounted for 77 per cent of total NESG manufacturing output. The three sectors are Cement (17.6 per cent), Food, Beverage and Tobacco (37.1 per cent) and Textile, Apparel and Footwear (22 per cent).
The report said that Nigeria earned N11,089.3billion from oil and N960.8billion from manufactured goods earning in 2020, adding that the statistics suggest that Nigeria was not producing enough manufactured goods for exports.
It stated that policy and regulatory inconsistency was a major reason why the manufacturing sector had not attracted significant investments.