Osinbajo urges incentives for farmers to enhance trade competition

Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Acting President, on Thursday said it was very important to give local farmers incentives to be able to compete favourably in international market.

He said this when he addressed the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) meeting in Abuja. According to him, the reason the imported rice are cheaper than local rice is that the foreign producers get incentives to produce at cheaper rates.

He said that he was not worried much about the current high cost of rice in the country because it was a temporary challenge that would soon end.

It is a short time challenge and we fully expected it even in agriculture policy.

It is fully expected that Nigerian rice will be more expensive than imported rice.

The simple reason is that the countries that export rice to us subsidise the production of rice.

So, their rice will hit the Nigerian market cheaper than our farmers and millers can currently deliver.

The acting president said that trade was a serious business and all countries of the world understood that trade created employment at home and made their countries to grow and make progress.

He said that other countries were subsidising to create jobs for their farmers and millers. According to him, it is up to the country to take measures that will reverse the negative trend.

If we continue importing, we are simply transferring our farmers and millers jobs to the countries that export rice to us. And that is why it is so important for us to understand that we must incentivize our own farmers.

Currently, we are working with the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Finance and the CBN governor and several others to put together an incentive regime for our farmers to ensure that our famers are also able to compete.

Whatever it is that other countries are doing to make their products cheaper, we will do the same and we will even do better than that, Osinbajo said.

He acknowledged that the Nigeria civil service and its professionals were the best in the world and could drive the reforms in business environment.