Last Sunday, Stallion Group announced the introduction of its Hyundai vehicles which would be manufactured and assembled here in Nigeria. The Nigeria based multinational conglomerate introduced the first set of Nigerian made Nissan vehicles and began producing Hyundai vehicles locally in July.
This step was encouraged by the new Automotive Policy in Nigeria. The policy aims to reduce the general cost of procuring vehicles and increase direct investment in the country. As of last month, Innoson Motors, a local vehicle producer were set to roll out their first set of locally manufactured automobiles.
Sunil Vaswani, CEO Stallion Group, said the investment in indigenously manufactured automobiles would break the control of wholesale vehicle importers in Nigeria. Stallion Group announced that the Hyundai passenger cars would be sold at affordable prices between 1.5 and 1.9 million naira, which is about 9300 and 11,700 dollars. Rest assured the vehicles would be manufactured with ISO/TS 16949 – the certified world class standard. The brands to be supplied to the market are Hyundai i10, Grand, Accent, Elantra and iX35, while in the truck and bus segments, the 10-tonne HD160, seven-tonne HD 120, five-tonne HD78 and three-tonne HD65 as well as 28+1-seater Hyundai County bus and 30-seater Stallion County bus.
At a meeting of the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers (NAMA) – comprising 14 vehicle manufacturers, the Nigeria’s Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, disclosed that plans were being made to enable Nigerians obtain loans with about 10 percent interest rate over a 4 year period to encourage the purchase of motor vehicles in Nigeria.
He expressed that the Nigerian government was working with banks who bought into the initiative, to reduce the interest rate. “The pool of funds can be as big as (the banks) want it, based on commercial consideration,” he said.
Aganga stated that the 14 vehicle assembly plant owners would be a huge part of the initiative and would be exempted from paying duties when importing Completely Knocked Down (CKD) parts. The normal duty rates are 5 percent for semi-CKD and 10 percent for the second grade of CKD.
