…Warns of rising inflation
Emeka Okoroanyanwu
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has warned that Federal Government directive banning foreign exchange allocation for food and fertilizer imports could cause further inflation, saying the country was not sufficient in food production as at now.
Acting Director General of MAN, Mr. Ambrose Oruche, said the country was not self-sufficient in food production and still needed forex to import some food.
Oruche said with the country not self-sufficient in food production there would be more inflation if there was no forex to import food items such as sugar and flour.
He said, “You will see that the last inflation report that was released showed food inflation rate has gone up which shows there is no food sufficiency because what normally happens is if demand is more than the supply, the price of the product will go up.
“I don’t know where they got the statistics that we are food sufficient because food is not even generic, it has a lot of components. I don’t know whether we are sufficient in other products of foods like products like milk, I don’t know the statistics they are using, but we are not sufficient in food production.
“We still need wheat to produce flour, the cost of flour has gone up because we could not get forex to buy flour and the cost of sugar has gone up,” Oruche said.
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The President, Muhammadu Buhari had last week directed the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, not to release money for food and fertilizer importation henceforth.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, who disclosed this in a statement titled, “Don’t give a kobo for food, fertilizers imports, President Buhari directs CBN,” said Buhari stated that firms that were bent on importing food should source their foreign exchange elsewhere.
Shehu said Buhari gave the directive at a meeting of the National Food Security Council at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Shehu quoted Buhari as restating his earlier verbal directive to the apex bank, saying he would pass it down in writing that ‘’nobody importing food should be given money.’’
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The statement quoted Buhari as saying, “From only three operating in the country, we have 33 fertilizer blending plants now working. We will not pay a kobo of our foreign reserves to import fertilizer. We will empower local producers.’’
Buhari also directed that blenders of fertilizer should convey products directly to state governments so as to skip the cartel of transporters undermining the efforts to successfully deliver the products to users at reasonable costs.
The President, he said, advised private businesses bent on food importation to source their foreign exchange independently, saying, “use your money to compete with our farmers’’, instead of using foreign reserves to bring in compromised food items to divest the efforts of our farmers.
“We have a lot of able-bodied young people willing to work and agriculture is the answer. We have a lot to do to support our farmers,’’ Buhari added.