As Nigerians continue to groan over the rising cost of food in the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has moved to crash the price of rice across the country.
This is with concluded plans by the the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) to distribute 27,000 metric tonnes of rice paddies directly to millers nationwide on Thursday.
According to reports, the move is part of the measures initiated by the CBN to help address the rising cost of food prices in the Nigerian market.
A statement from the CBN on Tuesday stated that the direct allocation from RIFAN warehouses across 16 states of the federation was sequel to the earlier sale of paddy aggregated as loan repayment under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme to millers from the rice pyramids unveiled in Niger, Kebbi, Gombe and Ekiti states.
The Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, CBN, Osita Nwanisobi, said Kaduna State had been selected as the key location for the paddy allocation exercise, which would be done simultaneously in the states that recorded the highest quality of rice harvests during the last farming season.
The CBN spokesman explained that the new strategy was in line with the bank’s mandate of ensuring price stability and its focus of being a people-centred central bank.
He was optimistic that the allocation of the paddies would lead to a decline in the prices of rice in the Nigerian market, boost availability, and ultimately check the activities of middlemen seeking to create artificial scarcity along the supply chains.
Note that the price of rice had been on the increase since the Federal Government banned the importation of rice through the land borders in a bid to boost local production and stop revenue leakage.
The CBN introduced Anchor Borrowers’ Program (ABP) to create a linkage between anchor companies involved in the processing of the required key agricultural commodities through the provision of farm inputs in kind and cash (for farm labour) to smallholder farmers.
The move is to boost the production of these commodities, stabilize inputs supply to agro-processors and address the country’s negative balance of payments on food.
The CBN recently launched pyramids of rice paddies in Niger, Kebbi, Gombe and Ekiti states, with similar exercise expected in the Federal Capital Territory, Ebonyi and Cross River in the coming weeks.
