By Tanko Mohammed
Disturbed by the increase in prices of rice, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) have concluded plans to crash the prices in all markets.
Dr Musa Olasupo, Assistant Director with the CBN and member, CBN Rice Value Team, said this on Tuesday in Abuja that the bank has aside the initial N15.7 billion approved in 2016 for rice mills and was working on additional rice mills fund for millers.
He said the bank was determined to support any entrepreneurial initiative aimed at ensuring food security and safeguarding the country’s foreign exchange from endless importation of rice that is available in varieties locally.
“The bank has started the funding process since 2015 and the bank will continue to fund the millers as part of government efforts at revamping agriculture to crash price of rice.
“Once the millers are able to produce more, price will continually come down until it attains an equilibrium position,’’ he said.
He said while Nigeria’s quest for self-sufficiency in rice production has continued to be hampered by issues around quality, price instability, and harvesting/processing challenges, among others, RIFAN has assured CBN that that Nigerians should expect between 9 to 11 million metric tons of rice by end of the year.
Olasupo, explained that CBN had financed the construction of rice mills to support food self-sufficiency and security adding that the multi-billion naira, 32 tonnes-per hour mill being constructed by the Lagos state government at Imota, has reached 80 per cent completion and will be completed before the end of the year.
He said upon completion with an expected production capacity of about 2.4 million annual processed 50kg bags of rice the rice mill is expected to create not less than 3250,000 jobs across the upstream and downstream sectors in the rice value chain.
The official said CBN is also funding other rice mills which include the WACOT and Labana Rice Mills in Kebbi State and Umza Rice Mill in Kano while Dangote Farms is also constructing five mills; two in Jigawa and one each in Kebbi, Zamfara and Sokoto states.
He explained that establishing bigger mills across the country has become imperative so that farmers will grow more paddies to feed the mills and crash the price of rice.
The official disclosed that rice consumption in Delta, Benin, Rivers, Beyalsa will be going to more than 200 million metric tonnes, so we need to bring in this efficiency by encouraging more people to mill.
Olasupo also disclosed that CBN and management of Bayero University Kano (BUK) have begun talks on how to develop a comprehensive blue print to fund rice production and processing in commercial quantity in the University.
He warned that the cost of production are more of physical issues, even if the cost of paddy is fixed, fuelling, labour and cost of bagging, will always be on the increase.
Alhaji Aminu Goronyo, National President RIFAN, has confirmed serious collaboration with CBN and assured Nigerians to expect between 9 to 11 million tonnes of rice by end of the year.
“It has become imperative to produce more because the available statistics indicated that the rice consumption rate in the country had increased from 7.9 million tonnes to over 8 million tonnes.
“The volume of rice production need to increase from 6.9 million tonnes per annum to 10 million considering our ever growing population,” he said.
He said the CBN is intervening in various ways to crash the price and urged Nigerians not to panic assuring that in the next few weeks the prices of rice will come down with the flooding of markets with local brands of rice.
