{"id":62318,"date":"2018-11-17T15:30:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T14:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=62318"},"modified":"2018-11-17T15:30:59","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T14:30:59","slug":"fg-okays-n60bn-for-rice-subsidy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=62318","title":{"rendered":"FG Okays N60bn For Rice Subsidy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh on Friday disclosed that the Federal Government has approved N60 billion subsidy to support rice industry in the country.<\/p>\n

He briefed State House correspondents after a meeting of the National Food Security Council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.<\/p>\n

Ogbe who was flanked by the Kebbi State Governor, Atiku Bagudu explained that the purpose of the subsidy was to help bring down price of the commodity in the country.<\/p>\n

He said \u201cThere is a subsidy programme coming up. Government has approved some money N60 billion to support the rice industry to bring down prices. But we are going to handle it differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to get into petroleum subsidy problem. So, a committee is looking at it with the Ministry of Finance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that it is better for us to loan money to the millers, farmers and distributors at a very low interest rate, so that the capital doesn\u2019t disappear, so they have cheaper credit to do their business that should impact on the price of rice in the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we are ready we will let you know,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

On the plan to ban fertilizer NPK 151515 which has been in use in the country for many years, he said that the ban became imperative because it adds no value to crops.<\/p>\n

He said \u201cWe call for the ban of fertilizer NPK 151515 which has been used in the country for many years but recent research revealed it\u2019s not useful for any crop or any soil.<\/p>\n

\u201cSoils differ and so do crop, to believe there is one uniform fertilizer you can spread for every crop is a fallacy. And it\u2019s because we have done soil test and change the formulations of fertilizers, local blenders that some of the yields we are getting now are rising from two tonnes per hectares to five and six.<\/p>\n

\u201dSo the president is looking into that and to how we can deal with it,\u201d he said<\/p>\n

On his part, Governor Bagudu said the council\u2019s attention was drawn to the report by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) which suggested that Nigeria remains a heavy importer of rice despite government\u2019s claim to the contrary.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe drew the attention of the council to a report by the US department for agriculture which suggested that Nigeria has been importing rice or about to the tune of about three million tonnes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe informed the council that contact has been made with the US agency to tell us the basis for the report because it\u2019s not consistent with the report available to us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only official importation in Nigeria is about 4,000 metric tonnes of rice. Secondly, the biggest exporter of rice, Thailand exported 1.1 million metric tonnes of rice to West Africa between January to October this year and India exported 402 million metric tonnes of rice to West Africa between January to end of July this year. That is a total of 1.5 million metric tonnes.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if all was smuggled into Nigeria, that was the total amount of importation one could attribute to Nigeria.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the US authorities responding by saying that their assessment was based on satellite imaging of flooded areas and consideration that we are about to enter electioneering period and that demand for rice by politicians or for political purposes will increase.<\/p>\n

\u201cThirdly, that most West African countries depend on Nigeria. So, because of the flooding, they concluded based on those assumptions that Nigeria will import more.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, that is an erroneous report. Even in spite of the flooding, the upland rice production has been quite strong this year. Even though prices have increase in response to flooding, we still have adequate paddy rice in Nigeria.\u201d he said<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh on Friday disclosed that the Federal Government has approved N60 billion subsidy to support rice industry in the country. He briefed State House correspondents after a meeting of the National Food Security Council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Ogbe who was flanked by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1383,4797,7886],"class_list":["post-62318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-audu-ogbeh","tag-fg","tag-rice-subsidy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}