The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed in a press briefing on Monday has said that more than ever, Nigeria is close to achieving self-sufficiency in rice production with sustained implementation of the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme launched on November 17, 2015.
According to the Minister, “this has been made possible by the purposeful leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, who has consistently said that this nation must produce what it consumes.’’
The minister recalled that the President launched the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme to provide farm inputs in cash and kind to smallholder farmers to boost local production of commodities, including rice.
He said the programme also aimed at stabilising inputs supply to agro-processors and address the country’s negative balance of payments on food.
“So far, less than 100 billion Naira has been spent on the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme that has achieved so much.’’
“The result is the exponential growth in local rice production that has now moved us closer to ending rice importation.
He recalled that in April 2008, the Yar’Adua led administration had to quickly release N80 billion from the Natural Resources Development Fund to import 500,000 MT with the aim of controlling what it said to be the effect of a global disaster.
Lai Mohammad said that if the attention the present administration is giving to rice production had been in place since 2008, the nation will be exporting rice by now.
“Within two years, rice importation from Thailand fell from 644,131 Metric Tons (in Sept 2015) to 20,000 MT (in Sept. 2017). That’s over 90 percent drop.
“Imagine that we have plowed that money into rice production in 2008, we would have been exporting rice by now,’’ he said.
On the records of the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria (RIPAN), Lai Mohammad said that there were five million rice farmers in 2015, but currently, the nation has recorded the existence of more than 11 million rice farmers.
He said RIPAN’s total investment in the Nigerian economy was in excess of N300 billion while upcoming investments would amount to N250 billion.
“The investments have not stopped as 15 more mills are about to take off, including the Dangote Rice Mills to be established in six states with a total capacity of about one million MT,’’ he said.
According to him, the new investments will add 5,000 jobs and additional 1,775,000MT of integrated rice milling capacity.
He added that five million farmers were recruited through indirect employment, more than 500,000 input suppliers were engaged and hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers, including labourers, got jobs.
He also said that it would save 300 million dollar FOREX from import substitution through local processing.
He said with the significantly increased production in rice paddy, Nigeria’s rice import bill, hitherto at 1.65 billion dollars annually, had dropped by over 90 percent.
The Minister said that in 2015, Nigeria produced 2.5m MT of milled rice and last year, it rose to 4m MT, leaving a gap of 2m MT.
The minister added that currently, rice consumption is approximately six million MT of milled rice. “Our target is to fill that gap by 2020.
“It is important to note that the new investments were made when Nigeria was in recession, indicating investors’ confidence in Mr President and the Nigerian economy”, the Minister said.
