The Central Bank of Nigeria is planning to include sugar and wheat on the list of commodities that will be banned from accessing foreign exchange (FX).
CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele said this on Thursday in Awe, Nasarawa state when he went on an inspection tour of the proposed $500 million 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.
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“Hopefully, within the next two years, we will provide that support. That is our interest here to reduce reliance on importation” he said.
Explaining why the apex bank would want to ban sugar and wheat on the FX restriction list he said is because “we spend $600m to $1 billion importing sugar into the country annually”.
Before adding the commodities to the FX restriction list, the CBN Governor said they “want to see to what extent we see the traction that is coming from those who are currently importing these items”.
“We must all work together to produce these goods in Nigeria rather than import them”.
On how much CBN was supporting the project with, he said “we have made up our mind on how much we’ll put but of course as you heard from Dangote, the project is worth about $500 million. 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”.
The proposed $500 million Dangote sugar processing plant in Awe, Nasarawa State will save Nigeria some $1 billion and create more than 150,000 jobs, President, Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote said.
Dangote said they have acquired 60,000 hectares of land in Awe, Nasarawa State to grow “up to one third of Nigeria’s sugar consumption, which is almost a million tonnes”.
He said the initial investment for this project was about $480-500 million noting that the CBN will provide support to make it a reality.
He said, “This project as you see it, will produce a lot of jobs and as a matter of fact, we have to bring a lot of people outside of this areas into the project to help in terms of employment. We’re talking about thousands of jobs direct and indirect jobs, more than 150,000 jobs.
“We will also do power generation and ethanol from sugar.
“If this place is up and running, I do not think there will be shortage of power in Nasarawa State. We will be having excess of 90mw of power.”