… announces planned funding support for rice production
Nigeria spent $2.41 billion on rice importation between January 2012 and May 2015, according to Godwin Emefiele, governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Tuesday.
Emefiele said the country was spending so much on imports, and that this informed the apex bank’s recent decision to ban forex access for importation of 41 items, as he signalled no plan to reverse the policy that had received criticisms.
Emefiele spoke in Abuja during a stakeholders’ meeting with officials of Paddy Rice Producing states and Rice Value chain investors.
“The reason the inclusion of rice in the exclusion list is not far-fetched. Figures available with the CBN show that from the period January 2012 to May 2015, the country had spent over $2.41 billion on importation of this commodity.
“Unfortunately, this trend has resulted in huge unsold stock of paddy rice cultivated by our farmers and low operating capacities of many integrated rice mills in Nigeria,” he said.
The CBN is now to support the local production of rice, and would in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Businesses groan as Calabar Port remains shallow amid N20bn dredging project Importers, investors and others whose businesses are situated in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, are counting their losses over low ebb of business activities, owing to the failure of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to deepen the depth of the Calabar Port channel to enable bigger vessels sail in.
According to them, the low draft of the port channel is taking its toll on not only private businesses but also on state government projects like Tinapa designed to create wealth and employment for youths.
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), they say, has also not been able to collect reasonable revenue from imports as the port is not receiving enough containers.
BusinessDay finding reveals that the Calabar Port, which lies about 55 nautical miles from the fairway buoy up to Calabar River and occupies close to 38 hectares of land, was built to enable international trade from the Eastern and Northern states of Nigeria.
Currently, the port depth, which NPA supposed to dredge to 9.8 meters as con- tained in the concession agreement signed by NPA, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and concessionaires, presently stands at 5.4 meters on low water and 6.4 meters on high water.
And this makes it extremely difficult for large vessels to call at the port, such that container vessels call the port once in three months while other independent operators use smaller vessels to carry bulk cargo into the port.
The crippling effects of this on the economy of Cross River State are enormous such that cargoes meant for Calabar port are routed from Lagos ports to their various destinations in the Eastern states, which is not good for the economy of the region, said Mike Ogodo, chairman, Shipping Association of Nigeria, Cross River State branch.
Ogodo, who doubled as a cocoa exporter, further said the low draft of the port was also having a devastating effect on the Calabar Export Processing Zone, which has been overtaken by several tank farms that are not supposed to operate in the zone.
Rural Development come up with a comprehensive financing model to support rice millers and other investors in the sector.
The CBN would make funds more accessible to the farmers through some of its funding programme such as the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme and the N220 billion Micro Small and Medium Enterprises Development fund, Emefiele said.
The funds would be made available to the rice farmers through the microfinance banks at 9 percent interest rate, Emefiele said, warning banks ahead against contravening the rules.
He appealed to state governments to provide lands for the farmers on a large scale, as we will work with them to clear some of these impediments, saying “we are at a stage where we must feed our selves and all hands are on deck to ensure this works.”
The governor also said the CBN, as the bank to federal government would go after rice importers who defaulted in the payment of customs duty after bringing in excess quotas of the product into the country at concessionary rates.
By exceeding their import quota, these rice importers have flooded the local market with rice that are sold below what is produced locally thus making consumers to ignore the locally produced ones.
“We are going to enforce it and we will go to the highest level to enforce this to ensure that they pay.
ONYINYE NWACHUKWU, Abuja
