According to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, Nigerian businessmen need to spend 2.5 billion dollars (about N492 billion) a week for the importation of goods and services into the country. Ogbeh made this known in a meeting with officials of VICAMPRO, an indigenous Agro Company investing in the production of Irish Potatoes, on Wednesday 14 September.
“The demand for dollars in this country as of today is 2.5 billion a week; this is the quantity of dollars Nigerians are asking for to import things".
“We should aggressively take the West African market; there is no reason why we should allow Irish potatoes from Ireland and France and Belgium into West Africa; it is the same story with onions.
“Under ECOWAS, at the level of government we are going to push for the greater part of the market to be kept for local investors,’’ he stated. He urged VICAMPRO to process potatoes for use in hotels, saying that hotels in Nigeria imported processed potato from South Africa.
Earlier, the Chief Executive Officer of VICAMPRO, Mr Michael Agbogo, said that potatoes could bring value worth over one trillion naira annually if properly harnessed. He said that the potato was the fourth most important crop in the world and that a barrel of oil was equivalent to 14 kilograms of potatoes.
According to Agbogo, while the current price of crude oil will fetch the country about N16,000 per barrel, the equivalent in potatoes will earn the country N39,000. He said that in terms of value, potatoes had three times the value of crude oil, adding that it was a huge industry the country could get into.
Agbogo said that Egypt and Algeria were the leading potato producing countries in Africa, with Egypt producing four million tonnes annually from about 100,000 hectares of land. He said that Nigeria, which had close to 500,000 hectares, was struggling to produce one million tonnes of potato per annum.
He said that farmers in Germany and New Zealand made up to 80 tonnes per hectare while their Nigerian counterpart made less than five tonnes per hectare. He, however, said that there were no seeds in the country and that the seed deficiency was close to 700,000 tonnes per season and two million tonnes per annum.
He said that with favourable policies, potatoes could generate foreign exchange for the country and reduce rice consumption.
Read more at: www.vanguardngr.com
