The National Sugar Development Council, NSDC, has disclosed its master plan to create about 117,000 jobs after the end of its 10-year plan of the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan, NSMP, by 2023.
Acting Executive Secretary of the Council, Mr. Samuel Ali Kwabe revealed this plan in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital during a recent Sugar sensitisation workshop with the theme ‘Sustaining the gains of NSMP for National Self-Sufficiency in Local Sugar Production’.
Kwabe said: “It will also substantially reduce importation of sugar to conserve the huge foreign exchange spent on imports annually; generate about 411MW of electricity; and create about 117,000 jobs etc.”
According to him, the master plan had also been adopted by the Federal Government “as a Road Map” to national self-sufficiency in sugar.
He noted that the road map is meant to provide the enabling environment and support to investment initiatives in employment generation, sugar cane cultivation and sugar factory processing operations.
The Executive Secretary, who was represented by Director Policy Planning Research and Statistics (PPRS), Mr. Kolawole Hezekiah, stated that the NSMP commenced in January 2013 “and it is expected that by the end of the 10-year plan period, Nigeria would have built up the industrial capacity required to among other benefits, produce about 1.79m metric tonnes of sugar and 161.2 litres of ethanol.”
He said all hands must be on deck to consolidate the modest gains already recorded and ensure successful implementation of the 10-year plan to the very end.
