3.4tr Rice Investment Under Threat, Say Processors

Rice processors have cried out that their N3.4 trillion investment for processing the staple food is under threat from smugglers.

To save the investment, the processors urged the Federal Government to criminalise the sale of foreign rice.

Director General of Rice Processors Association of Nigeria (RIPAN), Mr. Andy Ekwelem, spoke at the weekend in Abuja.

Addressing reporters on the development, Ekwelem regretted that smuggled foreign rice brands have flooded Nigerian markets again, thus threatening the existence of local rice mills.

The RIPAN chief warned that most Nigerian rice mills were under threat of shutting down with attendant job losses as investments in the sector were threatened by the activities of smugglers.

Nigerian rice mills, he said, employed over 13 million workers in 3.2 million cottage mills that employed at least five workers each.

Ekwelem said: “At a time, the government tackled the menace of rice smuggling. But immediately after the activities of #EndSARS movement and reopening of borders by the Federal Government, the markets have been flooded with foreign rice.

“We have said it many times on the need for government to criminalise sale of foreign rice in the markets and supermarkets. Rice is number one on the list of prohibited products in which the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) placed forex restriction on.

“It is assumed that any rice you see in this country now, in the markets, shops and even in your homes that is not Nigeria-made rice is smuggled into the country.

“The country is losing revenue because these smugglers are not paying the right duties to bring the rice into the country and this ugly development is killing our economy.”

He recalled that since the CBN intervention in local rice production, investments by integrated rice processors, down to cottage rice millers scattered all over the country, were over N3.4 trillion.