Sector’s growth sees Nigeria closer to ending rice importation
Official statistics say Nigeria consumes 6.5 million metric tonnes of rice, out of which about 3.5 million metric tonnes is imported, costing the nation over $2 billion annually in foreign exchange.
Until the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) launched the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) in 2015 to checkmate issues of reliance on imported rice, Nigeria produced just about 1.5 million metric tonnes of rice. Currently, rice production in Nigeria stands at 4.5 metric tonnes, out of which about 2.5 metric tonnes is fallout of the CBN intervention in rice production.
Official projection shows that Nigeria could achieve 3 million metric tonnes or more of rice production by 2017 farming season as by 2018, Nigeria is anticipated to achieve self sufficiency in rice production.
Since the ABP took off in 2015, over 12 states have keyed into it. While total disbursement as at December 2016 stands at N26, 998,143,566, CBN said it was the beginning of rice revolution in the country as thousands of jobs have also been created along the rice value chain.
The CBN established the ABP to stimulate local production of those key commodities that have significant impact on the nation’s food import bill.
A onetime minister of commerce and industry, Engr. Charles Ugwuh, who operates a rice mill (Ebony Rice) in Ebonyi State, had last year told financial journalists on tour of his facility that as an off-taker of the small holder farmers, his rice mill now has access to more paddy, adding that if the programme is sustained and deepened, his factory and others will always mill at optimum capacity.
Kebbi and Niger states have generated over 1.7 million metric tonnes of rice. Thus Kebbi and Niger alone may generate 3 million metric tonnes of rice in 2018. There are several other states that can take Nigeria’s rice production in excess of 6 million metric tonnes by 2018 through the CBN’s ABP.
Niger State alone has 90,000 square kilometers for rice farming and less than 10 percent is being utilized. “About 14,000 farmers in Niger State have been supported under the scheme and we have disbursed close to N2 billion under the programme. The state government has also applied and we are supporting them further,” the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, said recently on an inspection tour of the Badegi, Bida rice plains in Niger State.
Mr. Emefiele, who said the successes achieved in 2016 was just the raining season farming, added that stakeholders are working with the communities for dry season farming by providing them the necessary support.
To deepen rice production, the minister of agriculture and rural development, Chief Audu Ogbe, had promised rice farmers that government will support them with combined harvesters and rice mills.
The apex bank targets that by 2021, the ABP would have created at least 1,000,000 direct and indirect jobs in the processing segment of the identified value chains.
The president of National Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI), Ezekiel Essien, encouraged the CBN to sustain the initiative.
“Anything that is done to better the lot of the Nigerian masses is a most welcome development… We implore the CBN to make the process easier for all those who are serious in the business. It’s good and should be encouraged,” he said.
Abdullahi Yusuf, a rice farmer in Bida, Niger State, who commended the programme, asked that the value of the loan to farmers to be increased so they can farm more. He also made a case for more rice mills for rice farmers to ease the stress they go through in milling the rice.