- Shut Borders to Check Palm Oil Smuggling, Group Tells FG
The National Palm Produce Association of Nigeria has called on the Federal Government to close its borders against neighbouring countries to check the rising cases of smuggling of palm oil and other products not eligible for foreign exchange into the country.
The group also called on the Central Bank of Nigeria to provide credit to producers of palm oil in a manner that was different from that given to farmers under its Anchor Borrowers’ Programme.
It said while the apex bank provided loans under the ABP at an interest rate of about nine per cent, such arrangement would not work for palm oil production owing to the gestation period of oil palm.
Addressing journalists on Sunday in Abuja, the President, NPPAN, Mr Henry Olatunjoye, said that if the Federal Government was to achieve its objectives of achieving self-sufficiency in palm oil production in line with the presidential directive to the CBN, then operators in the sector should be given credit at two per cent with a moratorium of at least seven years.
He said, ‘’We are appealing to the CBN governor to liaise with stakeholders to get our feelings across and chart a way forward, we are not against his ambition to develop the industry but we are saying that the implementation is faulty in the way the policy is going.
“Our problem is not the ban on Crude Palm Oil but that borders must be totally shut against illegal importers.
‘’Let the Presidency know that it’s not the importation of palm oil that is the problem, the point is the unrestricted flow of CPO, refined vegetable oil and fats that find their way into the Nigerian market. This is making the government to lose billions of Naira or foreign exchange every year.
“Our advice is that the government should write letters to all its neighbours that are in West Africa that such illegal importation will carry serious consequences. This move will now prevent them from making Nigeria a dumping ground.”
On what the government needed to do to speedily revive the sector; he said more investments needed to be made in the development of research centres for the sector as being practised in other palm oil producing countries.
