How FG Revived 14 Vehicle Assembly Plants

The Federal Government has revived the 14 vehicle assembly plants which operated before the National Automotive Policy.

This was disclosed in Lagos on Tuesday by the Director-General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Mr Aminu Jalal during a stakeholders meeting of the Committee on implementation of the National Automotive Policy.

He said that the new entrants into the automobile manufacturing business were equally doing well.

He disclosed that government was in talks with a bank over a vehicle financing scheme to help Nigerians purchase made in Nigeria cars without hassles.

He said that government had to break the operations of the assembly plants into three because of the huge investments needed to set them up.

His words ;
“The reason why we break the assembly operations into three is that a new vehicle assembly plant is quite expensive to set up.

“If you are setting it up, the minimum you can do will cost you over $50 million (N11 billion)for about 10,000 units per year.

“After about a year, they start with SKD 2 (Semi-Knocked Down), which is a painted body, bringing in the internal and external fittings.

“Then you move to SKD1 where you have a body that is not painted, you have to paint it and so on.

“Then you move to CKD 1 (Completely- Knocked-Down) when you have to weld all the pieces together, paint and do the assembly.

“That is a transition in 12 months to the next phase."

Jalal added that while Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company and Ashok-Leyland have achieved CKD status, other assembly plants were at different levels of development.