THE National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) is repositioning the sugar sector as one of the country’s most compelling industrial investment opportunities, anchored on a $1 billion EPC-plus-finance partnership with SINOMACH of China, a N10 billion Sugar Project Acceleration Fund established with the Bank of Industry.
This came to the fore in Abuja when Chartered Institute of Directors (cIoD), visited the Executive Secretary of the Council, Mr. Kamar Bakrin.
He said Nigeria consumes about 1.8 million metric tonnes of sugar annually, with an estimated one billion dollars flowing each year to foreign producers.
Bakrin explained that the Council views this not as a deficit to be lamented, but as a ready-made domestic market waiting to be recaptured by Nigerian producers — value that the Nigeria Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) 2.0 is designed to retain within the national economy in the form of jobs, rural incomes, foreign exchange savings and industrial capacity.
“We don’t lack policy. What we have struggled with is world-class execution,” Bakrin said, stressing that the gap is not a farming problem but a governance problem — and therefore one that serious, well-run institutions can fix”.
The ES described NSMP 2.0 as an “acceleration mandate”: a deliberate compression of Nigeria’s path to self-sufficiency, targeting the delivery of about two million metric tonnes of locally produced sugar.
Beyond Sugar: Building a Bio-Industrial Ecosystem, Bakrin said the Council’s ambition extends well beyond substituting imports. Sugarcane, he noted, is one of the most generous crops in existence — yielding sugar, ethanol, animal feed and electricity — and NSMP 2.0 is structured to capture that full value chain.
“We have been blessed with a crop that is one of the most generous God has…
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