RICE
PRICE’LL FALL BY NOVEMBER— FG
The Federal Government on Monday declared
that the price of rice would start to fall from November this year.
It
stated that more Nigerians had returned to their various farms, adding that at
the next harvesting season next month, the price of rice would start to crash.
This
came as the government said that the delay in the approval of the 2016 budget
had made it impossible to implement the capital expenditure in the agricultural
sector.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural
Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, said this while addressing members of the Senate
Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development at the headquarters of the
ministry in Abuja.
Ogbeh,
who stated that the government could not be involved in the importation of rice
as speculated in some quarters, stressed that his ministry would not encourage
rice importation because it would be detrimental to local production.
He said
the Federal Government was against rice smuggling and noted that the Seme
border had become a notorious route for the smuggling of contraband products
into the country.
“We
will not encourage rice importation and there is no way our ministry or
government can be involved in importing rice when we are working hard to be
self-sufficient in local production. By November when the full-scale harvest
starts, rice prices will fall,” the minister said.
Early last month, the government had warned
that the price of rice might hit N40,000 a bag. It is currently being sold
around N20,000.
The
Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Heineken
Lokpobiri, said that the $22bn annual food import bill had led to the
astronomical rise in the price of rice and other commodities.
He
stressed that if Nigerians failed to produce some of the items being imported
before December, the price of rice could skyrocket to N40,000 a bag.
On why
the ministry had yet to start implementing its capital budget, Ogbeh said, “It
is about now that the capital expenditure is beginning. One of the reasons why
money is not circulating is that we need to follow the due process on issues of
procurement, advertisement and others.”
According
to him, his ministry has spent just N882.58m, representing four per cent of the
N21bn budgeted for it in the 2016 Appropriation Act.
He also
said, “You may be surprised to know that only six to seven states in Nigeria
are showing enthusiasm in agriculture. Some by nature don’t seem interested,
while others just can’t connect with whatever we are doing at the federal
level.”
Ogbeh further stated that his ministry
inherited N67bn debt when the present administration came on board, but added
that N20bn had been paid to agro-dealers and distributed 900 million oil palm
seedlings to farmers across the country. Read more
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