Subsidy on fertiliser, a fraud 'Sanusi

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, said on Monday that there was no subsidy on fertiliser in the country, contrary to the claim of regulatory authorities in the agricultural sector.He told the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture in Abuja that farmers were made to believe that they were buying subsidised fertiliser when it was indeed a fraud.Besides the alleged deceit, the CBN governor said 89 per cent of the product was delivered to people, who were not farmers, leaving real farmers with only 11 per cent.According to him, many of the bags making up the 11 per cent do not weigh up to 50kg, adding that they are sometimes filled with sand.The CBN governor had made a presentation to the committee on how government could develop the sector by funding it.He said that one way of doing this was to fix commodities values so that banks could find the sector attractive to invest in it."It is difficult to fix the financial value chain until the nation can fix the commodity value chain", he told the committee, which is headed by Mr. Mohammed Monguno.Sanusi put the net importation of agricultural products into the country annually at N630bn.He, however, noted that with adequate funding, Nigerias current output of N14.85tn could jump by 160 per cent to N34tn in 2030.Sanusi added, "This growth potential comes from the potential to increase yields to 80 to 100 per cent of benchmark countries; increase acreage by 14m hectares new agricultural land, approximately 38 per cent of Nigerias unused arable land of 36.9m hectares; and shift 20 per of production to higher value crops."Sanusi cited poor funding of research and development, lack of infrastructure, lack of local storage and processing, threats from pests and climate change as some of the challenges facing the sector.He recalled that in the late 1960s when the country paid adequate attention to the sector, it led in products such as cocoa, groundnuts, ground nut oil and palm oil.Sanusi said, "In the 1960s, Nigeria had over 60 per cent of global palm oil exports, 30 per cent of global groundnut exports, 20-30 per cent of global groundnut oil exports and 15 per cent of global cocoa exports."By 2000, Nigeria global share of exports of each of these crops was five per cent or less."
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