‘FG must address smuggling neighbours to tackle economic sabotage’

Federal Government must be determined to confront‎ ‘smuggling prone neighbours’ to address economic sabotage, while also ensuring that Nigeria’s quest for rice sufficiency is achieved, Richard-Mark Mbaram the Managing director of AgroNigeria said.

‎Richard also want the federal government to use all diplomatic channels to address huge concerns of smuggling which they argued is already taking its toll on Nigeria’s rice sufficiency targets by 2020.

Speaking to news men on Wednesday ahead of the‎ high level rice Conference to be held in Abuja said the ‘Index Mundi’ has started upgrading Nigeria’s figure on rice production, noting further that the government needs to work with the Private sector closely to ensure sustainability of the rice sufficiency initiative.

‎”We are very much concerned about smuggling coming in mainly from countries around us,and we believe that the government must confront these issues headlong to ensure that smuggling don’t impact negatively on our farmers.”

“At the high-level rice conference,‎we want to open up these issues to further discussion especially as it pertains to smuggling and it’s wider implication on the Nigeria’s economy. We have approached relevant agencies to be part of these discussions,and these issues must be brought to the front burner.”

He also pointed out that issues bothering on research ‎,marketing,infrastructure  and rice value chains would be discussed, and challenges confronting the sector frontally addressed at the conference.

‎”Notore Chemicals Industries, AFEX, Syngenta and Olams rice, and Stallion have all signed u for the programme and would be anticipating and engaging the public sector on Nigeria’s rice sufficiency targets and other hindering concerns,” He adds further.

Recall, Muhammad Guronyo, the President of Rice Farmer‎s Association of Nigeria RIFAN, said as at the end of December 2017 that Nigeria is currently cultivating 5.8 million metric tonnes of paddy rice, while affirming that Nigeria is on track to the rice sufficiency targets set by the federal government by 2020.

In the same vein, Nigeria’s Minister of Information Lai Mohammed said the federal government is determined to achieve the set target of rice sufficiency by 2020.

According to him,Nigeria’s current rice consumption is approximately 6 million metric tonns of milled rice.”In 2015,Nigeria produced 2.5 m MT of milled rice. By 2017,it rose to 4. MT, leaving a gap of 2mMT.Our target is to fill the gap by 2020″ he said.

‎On the heels of the minister’s assertion,Ephraim Manga of Syngenta said at the briefing that  the federal government must be willing to address concerns of quality of inputs and technology adoption in order to address the drive to rice sufficiency.