FEM: Govt to compensate firms for payments on machinery

The 1988 budget will take care of the additional cost being borne by firms for machinery and plants imported before SFEM came in to operation.
This hint was dropped yesterday by the secretary to the Federal Government, Chief Olu Falae while reacting to a question at the press briefing of media executives.
Chief Falae, said, the federal government is not unaware of the problems being faced by industrialists in trying to settle the retrospective cost of equipment they imported which the operation of FEM has imposed on them.
Chief Falae said that the federal government has a desire to find a lasting solution to the problem of post import cost payment.
Said he, I hope that we will be able to solve the problem in the 1988 budget.
Manufacturers and industrialists who had imported capital goods plants, machinery and equipment two years before the operation of SFEM had been directed by their bankers to pay the difference between the cost of acquiring the equipment then and the post SFEM cost.
This has been causing a lot of anxiety and concern amongst industrialists in the past few months, several manufacturers have cried out against such unforseen cost.
The president of small scale industrialists had at a seminar organised by the minister of industries draw government attention to the repercussion of banks having to demand an additional cost for equipment acquired years after such had been duly paid for.
He had argued that such ac will not encourage the establishment of indusries in the country as those who imported consumer goods were not affected with the arrangement.
Earlier the chief of general staff had told media executives that an inter ministerial committee set up by the cabinet office had identified assets worth N20.7 million in sixteen federal establishments for rehabilitation.
This the chief of general staff said in line with the 1987 budget speech of e president which enuciated the maintenance culture in place of the Replacement Syndrome that hd dominated the economic life of this nation since the oil boom days.
To give practical expression to this policy statement the chief of general staff said, that the federal government has given approval to the affected establishments to embark on the rehabilitation exercise. The chief of general staff said that the successful completion of this exercise will no doubt, save a lot of foreign exchange.