No dollar sold for rice import – CBN

The volume of rice importation into Nigeria (in metric tonnes) has declined drastically in 2018 judging by official figures, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said.

The official figures show that India and Thailand, which are dominant rice exporters to Nigeria, as at September, the latter had so far exported about 5,161 metric tonnes of rice to Nigeria, while the former sold only a paltry sum of 426 as at July 2018.

Attributing the reduction to concerted effort by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the interventions of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Director, Corporate Communications at the CBN, Mr. Isaac Okorafor said the bank had not allocated any foreign exchange for the importation of rice this year.

According to Mr. Okorafor, “the figures being bandied in certain quarters were based on unrealistic assumptions such as satellite mapping of farms, expected demand by politicians for election campaigns as well as expected losses from flooding, all of which led to unauthentic conclusions that the country had imported or could import 400,000 more metric tonnes.”

The Spokesperson for the CBN further noted that the combined figure of 5,587 tonnes of rice imports from India and Thailand may have been rice imported on notvalid-for-forex basis.