Sugar production rose from 14,918 metric tonnes (MT) in 2017 to 30,000MT in 2018, according to the National Sugar Development Council (NSDC). This is as Dangote Sugar, Flour Mills and BUA expand local sugarcane plantations to get raw sugar.
Most sugar makers import raw sugar and refine it locally, industry players say.
Sugar import fell from $459.36 million in 2017 to $337.31 million in 2018.
Consumption also fell from 1.301 million MT to 1.246 million MT in 2018.
“There are a lot of improvements in the sugar value chain,” Masur Ahmed, president, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), said at a press conference in Lagos last week.
“Three companies are already developing significant sugarcanes as their raw material,” he added.
Industry players, however, say there is slow progress in the sugar value chain, owing to poor monitoring of the backward integration policy, which has resulted in some local companies flouting the agreement by importing more of the products, rather than making the desired local investments as earlier agreed with government.
“Certain companies have not been quite diligent in adhering to the rules,” Sadiq Usman, head- corporate business development, Flour Mills, said in a telephone interview with BusinessDay recently.
“Also, documentation, planting issues, weak infrastructures and land rights are still big problems for us and these factors have continued to slow the pace of our development in boosting sugar production,” Usman said.
He said that Flour Mills – Nigeria’s second largest maker of the sweetener— lost 75 percent of its sugarcane plantation owing to floods that ravaged their farmlands in 2018.
“Last year, the floods wiped away a significant proportion of our sugarcane production. It affected close to 2,000 hectares of the 3,000 hectares we planted and now we are replanting again.”
ODINAKA ANUDU
