The Federal Government has said it will review the Public Procurement Act to promote the patronage of locally-made products in the country.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, stated this at the press launch of the campaign for the patronage of made-in-Nigeria products.

He said the need to amend the Act was borne out of the conviction that the government needed to encourage companies to produce what the country needed, while at the same time boosting local production of goods and services.

Mohammed stated that as long as the country failed to increase patronage of locally-made products, the level of unemployment would continue to increase, while the manufacturing and other sectors of the economy would continue to perform below optimum capacity.

He said the government was mindful of the fact that the business environment needed to be made friendlier for people to invest in key sectors of the economy, adding that a lot was being done in that direction by the Presidential Committee on Ease of Doing business.

This, he added, would greatly reduce business constraints, while at the same time encouraging companies to produce more quality products for the Nigerian market and for exports.

The minister said, “The Federal Government is not just paying lip service to buy made-in-Nigeria initiative, we have taken concrete steps to actualise it. We want to produce what we eat and consume what we produce, and we have in the last two years put in place measures that will make it easy for people to do business in Nigeria

“This government is determined to ensure that we take at least 20 steps in the ease of doing business index.”