Okechukwu Enelamah, minister of
industry, trade and investment, says the new federal government tomato policy
will stop the importation of tomato paste.
Speaking during a visit to GB
Foods Nigeria’s tomato backward integration project in Kaduna, the minister
assured that the government is committed to boosting tomato production.
During an earlier visit to
Dangote Tomato Processing Plant, Audu Ogbeh, the minister of agriculture and
rural development, had expressed the government’s willingness to ban tomato
paste importation.
In a bid to diversify the economy
and boost local production, the federal government had restricted the
importation of rice while the Central Bank of Nigeria restricted forex for the
importation of 43 items including fertilizer, textiles and toothpicks.
Enelamah said the implementation
of the policy would also open up investment in greenhouse farming and address
some challenges faced by tomato farmers in the country.
“I like what I saw and I am
highly impressed,” he said. “When we see genuine investors, ours is to help
them grow.”
In his comments, Francis Ogboro,
chairman of GB Food Africa, the company has so far spent over N2 billion on the
backward integration project on the farm in the procurement of tractors, high
tech farming equipment for seedling, planting, harvesting and processing of the
tomato paste among others.
The project also consists of four
hectares of Greenhouse seedlings; 16 hectares of tomato planted, all of which
have created over 50 jobs.
He said, GBFoods Africa’s
investments in Nigeria will make a significant positive socio and economic
impact, including: the creation of 1,500 jobs, empowerment of more than 3,000
farmers; reduction of foreign currency demand; increased tax revenue; increased
productivity of the tomato industry by a minimum of 60MT/Ha; and reduced food
imports.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com