Despite N171.4 billion spent by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on farmers under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) over the past three years, local rice is still not available in major markets across Nigeria.
Godwin Emefiele, CBN governor, recently said that the apex bank as at March 2019 has committed N171.35 billion to 920,788 farmers under the ABP initiative with rice growers accounting for the highest percentage of recipients of the money.
Emefiele said Nigeria has saved over $600 million from rice imports in 2016 alone owing to the gains of the government’s ABP initiative which, he said, has translated Nigeria from a net importer to a major producer of the crop.
Data from the Thailand’s Rice Exporters Association also show that the country imported only 6,537MT of rice in 2018, a staggering drop from 1,239,810MT in 2014 before the commencement of the ABP initiative in 2015.
Despite this tremendous decline in imports data and recent increase in local production, foreign varieties of the crop still dominate the Nigerian markets.
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During BusinessDay’s recent visits to Daleko, Oshodi, Mile 12, Ketu, Oyinbo and Oja Oba markets in Lagos, only few local brands were found on the shelves of traders as foreign brands were largely present in these markets despite the recent border closure policy and increased local production.
The same situation was observed by BusinessDay reporters in Port Harcourt, Anambra, Abuja and Ilorin.
Bose Bakare, a rice trader at Mile 12 market, said that traders hardly get supply of local rice from distributors.
“We constantly get supply of foreign brands of rice and rarely get for local brands. Customers still prefer imported rice to locally-produced ones,” Bakare told BusinessDay.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecast Nigeria’s milled rice 2018/2019 production at 4.78 million MT, up over 2.5 percent from the revised marketing 2017/18 figure of 4.66 million MT.
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture puts Nigeria domestic demand for rice at 7 million MT per annum, leaving a gap of 2.22 MMT.
Despite domestic efforts made in boosting rice production, perennial problems like insufficient supply chain integration, lack of capacity for farmers, consumers’ high preference for foreign rice varieties and smuggling of the produce are still threats to local production.
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But since the border closure over a month ago, volumes of imported rice smuggled through the land borders have reduced, leading to a spike in prices.
“Before the Federal Government began the border closure exercise, I used to go to Cotonou market almost on daily basis to bring at least 60 bags of 50kg parboiled rice,” said a rice dealer in one of the notable markets in Lagos, who gave her name as Iya Bola.
Experts in the rice value chain said that some of the rice in the markets now are local varieties but rebranded as foreign varieties since the recent border closure policy of the government.
They attributed the rebagging of the local rice to sharp practices of traders and Nigerians’ high preference for foreign brands.
“Since the border closure policy, traders buy between N14,500 and N15,000 for 50kg bag of local brands and repackage with sacks of foreign varieties to sell between N20,000 and N22,000,” said Rotimi Fashola, general manager, Elephant Group plc.
“There are very good mills in Nigeria today that you cannot spot the difference between local and foreign varieties anymore,” Fashola said.
Similarly, Muhammed Augie, state chairman, Kebbi State Rice Farmers Association, said that lots of traders from the south have been going to the state to buy rice in large volumes of rice and larger percentage of it is repackaged.
“As a result of traders’ desire to make higher profits on their investments and Nigerians’ high preference for foreign rice, most of the local rice bought from Kebbi and other key rice producing states are being rebagged into foreign brands and sold,” Augie said.
“This is why you will not find local brands in markets across major cities in the country,” he added.
To validate the statements by the stakeholders, BusinessDay visited some markets to examine some of the rice samples to see if they can be easily differentiated.
For some of the rice milled locally or with a semi milling machine, one can easily differentiate between the locally produced varieties and the imported ones.
However, for the ones milled by integrated rice millers such as Olam, Elephant Group and Stallion, among others, they cannot be differentiated from foreign varieties, BusinessDay investigation finds.
JOSEPHINE OKOJIE
