By Bisola Adeyemo
The national president of the Maize Association of Nigeria (MAAN), Dr Bello Abubakar, has advised middlemen not to imbibe the habit of taking advantage of the supply gap to hike the price of the grains.
Abubakar said this on Monday when the Central Bank of Nigeria released 50,000 metric tonnes of Maize to farmers.
The release of maize to the companies, which is the third of such releases, is intended to check the activities of intermediaries who hoard the product and cause artificial scarcity.
A statement obtained from the CBN, according to leadership news, showed the listed recipients of the grains as; Premier Flour Mills, Crown-Olam, Grand Cereals, Animal Care, Amobyn and Hybrid Feed. Others include Obasanjo Farms, Zartech, Wacot, Sayeed Farms, Pandagri Novum and Premium Farms.
Confirming the release, the CBN spokesman, Osita Nwanisobi, expressed optimism that the release would crash the price of maize, reduce pressure on the market and make the product directly available to feed producers, thereby reducing the price of poultry feed in the country.
As part of the bank’s financing framework, Nwanisobi said the CBN would continue to facilitate the funding of maize farmers and processors through the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) commodity association, private/prime anchors, state governments, maize aggregation scheme (MAS), and the commercial agricultural credit scheme (CACS).
Similarly, the bank, in a renewed move to address the rising cost of food prices in the Nigerian market, collaborated with the rice farmers association of Nigeria (RIFAN) to distribute 27,000 metric tonnes of rice paddies directly to millers nationwide on Thursday, June 24, 2021.