Nigerians Expend N25billion Daily on Food Import

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, NIRSAL, has said Nigerians spend about N25 billion daily on foods import.

NIRSAL a subsidiary of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, said about $623 million is equally spent yearly on catfish, most of which is smuggled, adding that the country has about 71.2 million cultivable hectares of land, with only about 34.2 million hectares currently under cultivation.

NIRSAL said with this, it means the agriculture sector of the economy can employ 65 per cent of the population if government decides to go into full-scale agriculture.

Executive Director, Arowosafe Jide, who spoke at the Three-Day Agricultural Value Chain Financing, AgVCF, training Workshop organized for bankers in Kaduna, said the training became imperative due to distrust between the farmers and lending banks to finance agric projects.

He said this was part of the reasons for over dependence on importation of what the country could actually produce if all professionals in the agric value chain can be sensitised and made to play their expected roles, especially now that government is shifting it’s attention from oil and gas to agriculture.

Jide said, NIRSAL is building the capacity of bankers with a view to keying into the agricultural agenda of the President Mohammadu Bulgari’s administration.

The report by NIRSAL showed that Nigeria loses about $623 million to dairy importation, $500 million on sugar importation, $4 billion on wheat importation, $2.2billion on cotton importation and $2 billion on rice smuggling annually.