VICTORIA ONU, ABUJA
THE Central Bank of Nigeria has unveiled plans to include sugar and wheat on the list of commodities that will be banned from accessing foreign exchange.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, made this disclosure on Thursday in Awe, Nasarawa State, during an inspection tour of the proposed $500m Dangote Sugar processing facility.
Emefiele said, “We are looking at sugar and wheat. We started a programme on milk about two years ago. Eventually, these products will go into our FX restriction list.”
He declared the CBN would support the project to succeed owing to its potentials in conserving the much needed foreign exchange to boost the country’s reserves.
“Hopefully, within the next two years, we will provide that support. That is our interest here to reduce reliance on importation,” he added.
CBN’s decision to include sugar and wheat on the FX restriction list, he said, was because the country spends between $600m and $1bn importing sugar into the country annually.
Before adding the commodities to the forex restriction list, the CBN Governor said, “We want to see to what extent we see the traction that is coming from those who are currently importing these items.”
On how much CBN would be supporting the project with, he said, “We have made up our mind on how much we will put but of course as you heard from Dangote, the project is worth about $500m.
“If you convert that to naira, you know how much that is. I know he’s going to commit some equities to it. From there, we will determine what is the shortfall and we will come in through intervention through the banks for whatever loan that is required for this.”
President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, said the company had acquired 60,000 hectares of land in Awe, Nasarawa State, to grow up to 30 per cent of Nigeria’s sugar consumption.
He said the CBN had agreed to provide the needed support to make the project a reality.
