Some 834 manufacturing companies closed shop in 2009 due to harsh operating environment in Nigeria, the private Punch newspaper reported Sunday, quoting a survey by the umbrella Ma nufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN).
According to the survey, which the paper said it obtained exclusively, half of t he remaining firms have also been classified as ”ailing”.
The most affected areas of the country are the South-west and Lagos area, with 2 25 and 214 companies shutting down respectively in those regions, followed by 178 in the South-east and 176 in the north.
The South-west and the Lagos have the highest number of closed companies because they have the largest concentration of companies in the country, the survey said.
The Punch quoted an economic analyst, Dr. Warea Thomas, as saying ”if 834 firms were officially given by MAN to have closed shop in 2009, it is easy to speculate that not less than 83,400 jobs were lost i n that year alone, if we assume that they were all medium-size manufacturing firms, with each having 100 workers.”
MAN is due to update the survey in Nov. 2010.