Director General of the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria (RIPAN), Mr. Andy Ekwelem, has said boosting local rice production has cut imports mostly from Thailand from 1.2 million metric tons in 2014 to a paltry 438 tons in 2022.
Briefing the media in Abuja yesterday, Ekwelem also said Nigerian farmers produced 8.4m tons of rice in 2021 and the paddy loads were off-taken by rice processors/millers who processed them and supplied to the markets.
He said, “Before the current administration, Nigeria officially allowed imported rice. As at the last quarter of 2014, official rice import from Thailand was about 1.24m tons; by 2015, these imports had dropped to about 644,131 tons and in 2016, it dropped to 58,260 tons.
“In 2017, the imports further dropped to 23,192 tons but by 2022, it dropped to an all-time minimum of 438 tons,” he noted.
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He acknowledged some policies of President Muhammadu Buhari through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that encouraged local production and processing of rice. Some are the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, the Paddy Aggregation Scheme, the Private Sector-Led Accelerated Agriculture Development Scheme, the Real Sector Support Facility (RSSF), etc.
“Today, Nigeria boasts of over 100 large-scale integrated rice processing facilities. This is a more than 700 per cent increase from the mere 13 large integrated mills between 2010 and2014,” he said.
Although this is a milestone, Daily Trust reports that rice is still expensive. Ekwelem however said: “The factory price of local rice remains N31,000 and the reason Nigerians may purchase it at higher prices could be due to high cost of transporting the goods to the market, as well as high cost of fertilizer among others.”
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