The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has reported that Nigeria spends around $2 billion annually on the importation of wheat.
The apex bank’s Director, Development Finance Department, Yila Yusuf, made this disclosure, at the Wheat Conference and Stakeholder Engagement with the theme ‘Improving and Sustaining the Wheat Value Chain Development in Nigeria’ held in Abuja.
While highlighting the enormous potential of the wheat value chain for ground-breaking impact in the nation’s agricultural sector, the Director said the apex bank decided to focus attention on the wheat value chain for 2021/2022 dry season planting following sustainable progress it had recorded across the rice and maize value chains in the past few years.
He expatiated: “The CBN plans to address key problems in the value chain through financing massive production of wheat in Nigeria and seeks to facilitate sustained availability of high yield seed variety in country and improve general productivity.”
Yusuf hinted that with over $2 billion spent on the importation of over five million metric tonnes (MT) of wheat yearly, the commodity remained the second highest contributor to the country’s food import bill and putting pressure on the country’s foreign reserves.
In addition, he estimated that only one percent or 63,000MT of wheat, out of the five to six million metric tonnes of wheat consumed annually was being produced locally, stressing that the apex bank’s intervention in the wheat value chain has become imperative due to the high demand for wheat in Nigeria and the inability to meet that demand.
In his opening remarks at the conference, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Abubakar, lamented the rising bills of wheat importation to the country, despite the capacity to cultivate the crop locally.
The minister appealed to all stakeholders to collaborate by investing more in the crop’s value chain in order to reduce the importation bills.
In his remarks, Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, also charged stakeholders in the wheat value chain to combine all their efforts towards boosting wheat cultivation and production in the country.
Ganduje, who was represented by his deputy, Nasiru Gawuna, commended the CBN’s efforts in boosting the commodity value chain and appealed to the apex bank on timely disbursement of funds to wheat farmers and processors.
It would be recalled that the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had in March this year disclosed that the apex bank was working to increase local wheat production and reduce yearly importation of the commodity by 60 percent.
