A Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative to boost the country’s fish production and ensure self sufficiency in aquaculture has taken off in Lagos State.
The initiative is a World bank/ETF assisted-Lagoon project between Project Fix Nigeria Limited and the Federal Government. It is targeted at giving economic empowerment to over 30million economic entities in 10-years, simplifying access to equity financing and removing high cost of doing fish farm business.
The project will be done on a 25 acre livestock farming value chain infrastructure in Lagos.
Segun Kowontan, president, Project Fix Nigeria Limited, told journalists during a tour on the fish and livestock facilities by Central Bank of Nigeria, Bank of Industry and Lagos State Government that the project could not have come at a better time.
“We believe at a critical time as this in Nigeria’s history, the time is apt for Nigerians to bring together the economic entities that will engage in industrial agric farming value chain/export riding on cooperative synergy effect, to make it happen,” Kowontan said.
“The Federal Government has handed over the facilities to us under PPP arrangement. We signed the MoU with the government less than a year ago. Under the arrangement, the Federal Government has 30 percent of the return on investment, the investors 40 percent and the project promoters 30 percent,” he added.
According to him, the mandate of the project under PPP arrangement is to provide platform for cooperatives and associations to go into fish farming.
Waheed Olagunju, acting managing director of Bank of Industry (BOI), tasked fish farmers to meet international best practices. He noted that for them to be competitive and export to other countries they must pay serious attention to international best practices.
”There is need for us to do things in line with global best practices. Development partners are ready to work with you. It is for us to come with viable projects so that you can get lendable facilities, debt financing as well as grant from development partners,” Olagunju said.
“We are here because we support production at different levels. Primarily, we support value addition and processing and the one sector where we are involved in primary production is fishing and aquaculture. This is because of the perishable nature of the products. Unless you do the processing very close to where it is being harvested, you will have a lot of harvest loss,” he said.
He added, “We are ready to finance any viable potential initiatives. We are looking at opportunities and ours is to de-risk and also ensure we remove all the risks identified in the project. We believe in viable and sustainable businesses because a lot of things will be achieved such as job and wealth creation.
Ada Momah, principal manager, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said:
“We believe Lagos has a comparative advantage for fish over every other state and we want every fish farmer in Lagos to be on board for CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme. We have been having meetings with fish farmers in Lagos and we want the organisers of this initiative inside that platform for us to work together as a family and make sure Lagos comes up strong in fish production.”
Josephine Okojie
