President Muhammadu Buhari, on Tuesday, unveiled a 1.2 million bags of paddy rice pyramid, in Abuja.
Lauding the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, on the Anchor Borrowers Programme, the president expressed his joy on the mass production of rice.
In his address at the event, the president said that his food security agenda would drive down prices of food items in the country.
He stressed that from a national paddy rice production of about 4.5 tons per annum before the introduction of ABP initiative in 2015, paddy rice production rose to over 9 million tons last year.
The CBN governor said that as at the end of December 2021, his team had financed a total of 4.5 million farmers that cultivated 5.3 million hectares across 21 commodities through 23 Participating Financial Institutions in the 36 states of the federation, including FCT.
Noting that Thailand alone exported 1.3 million metric tons of rice to Nigeria in 2014, Emefiele said, however, that the CBN introduced the ABP in 2015 to curtail food importation.
Since that time, he said, Nigeria had witnessed reductions in rice imports from Thailand.
”By 2016, rice imports from Thailand had fallen to 58,000 metric tons. As of the end of 2021, they only exported 2,160 metric tons to Nigeria, thereby saving us foreign exchange and helping to preserve jobs in Nigeria,” Emefiele said.
