A report on used car imports from the United States released by the US Department of Commerce, Office of Transportation and Machinery has revealed that imports for August 2018 showed that Nigeria took an average delivery of 5,706 cars.
The statistics further indicated that most of the used cars are SUVs, saloon and heavy duty vehicles.
A transport analyst who spoke on the surging imports of used cars from the US to Nigeria said “majority of the said imports came in from smuggling across the over 1,000 land borders;” adding that “Without several seizures by the Nigerian Customs, the figure would have been higher than what was given.
The expert, who pleaded anonymity, blamed the massive importation cars from the US and other parts of Europe to the hasty auto policy introduced by the federal government without recourse to the state of local manufacturing of vehicles and their operating environment.
Before now, several industry experts have described the introduction and administration of the Nigerian National Auto Policy since 2014 as counterproductive because the imposition of 70 per cent duty on vehicles to discourage imports and encourage patronization of Nigerian made or assembled cars failed from day one.
They agreed that the failure stemmed from the fact that the capacity of local manufacturers to meet the demands and most especially the costs was impossible.
