The Nation Newspaper

Category: Industry

  • ‘We’re committed to achieving inclusive growth’

    The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah, has spoken of the ministry’s willingness to play a critical role in the economy, especially, now that the government is poised to diversify from oil in a sustainable manner.

    The minister, who spoke in Lagos  during a meeting with interest groups and trade associations, said he planned to achieve this through creating an enabling environment for industry, trade and investment with the implementation of the Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP).

    Enalamah said the current administration was poised to attract long-term local and foreign investments, despite the current challenges facing the nation. His words: “The flip side of the crisis is the opportunity it presents to create something new, develop new attitudes and appetites.

    “Fully convinced that this crisis is too good an opportunity to waste, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has started the difficult but rewarding task of making the economy break free from its traditional dependence on oil and gas and in its place developing a diversified export base and a solid base of domestic manufacturing.”

    He maintained that there has been consistent investor interest and attention on Nigeria.  He said this was good news given the difficult macroeconomic environment in which the nation has found itself with the dwindling oil prices.  He, however, advised that the renewed interest on the country should not be taken for granted, but seen as a timely opportunity to carry out a fundamental reform of the economy.

    He reiterated that the nation would overcome its challenges, hinging his optimism on the confidence and entrepreneurial energy and zeal of Nigerians. We see this energy everywhere – from small businesses to large ones, from aspiring entrepreneurs to long-established ones; in formal and informal settings. Having acknowledged this, we must find ways to harness these energies,” he said.

    Enelamah emphasised that the development of SMEs remained his ministry’s priority, considering the huge growth they will have on the economy.

    “Operators of SMEs are the unsung heroes of our economy. Currently, they contribute about half of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and possess the potential to be even more productive if given the right incentives,” he stated.

    He said to reposition SMEs, the ministry will work with agencies like the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Bank of Industry (BoI), Industrial Training Fund (ITF), and the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC). It will also collaborate with other ministries and agencies of government to roll out programmes and initiatives focused on supporting MSMEs with financing, infrastructure, technical support and training.

    Enelamah said as part of the Federal Government’s N500 billion Social Protection programme for 2016, over two million traders, farmers and artisans will receive micro-credit, through a fund to be managed by BoI.

  • NB to honour distributors, trade partners

    NB to honour distributors, trade partners

    Nigerian Breweries PLC will, today, reward distributors and trade partners across the country.

    The award, according to the company’s Corporate Affairs Adviser, Mr. Kufre Ekanem, will be given to distributors and key transporters, who excelled in their business partnerships with NB. last year.

    The event, which will hold in Lagos, would be  preceded by a distributors’ business meeting to recognise and reward excellent performance of the company’s distributors and transporters for the year. The awards will also provide the platform to evaluate the previous year’s business performance and communicate new business strategies to distributors.

    The awards categories include: National Volume Champion; National Volume Champion (1st & 2nd Runners Up); Regional Champions; Regional Volume Champion – 1st Runner Up; Regional Volume Champion – 2nd Runner Up. Others are: Millionaire Club (SKDs), who achieved between 1m and 1.99m cases); Millionaire Club (SKDs), who achieved between 2m and 2.99m cases) and Millionaire Club (SKDs) who achieved 3m cases and above.

    Prizes to be carted home by lucky distributors include brand new Mercedes Benz truck; Mitsubishi Canter trucks; Mitsubishi L200 double cabin; forklifts; sound proof generating sets; cash rewards and several free cartons of Nigerian Breweries products. Ekanem said apart from rewarding the distributors, the night was exceptional.

     

  • Dangote boosts rice production with outgrowers’ scheme

    Dangote boosts rice production with outgrowers’ scheme

    Commodities giant Dangote Group has unveiled a massive rice production scheme. The Dangote Rice Outgrowers’ Scheme has been unveiled  in Hadejia, Kafin-Hausa Local Government Area of Jigawa State.

    About 5, 000 farmers are expected to participate in the scheme, which kicked off with the distribution of treated rice seedlings for planting.

    Dangote Group President Aliko Dangote said the programme, which began with 20, 000 hectares of rice cultivation, would be expanded to cover 800,000 hectares over the next three years. He said there was no better time than now to turn to agriculture to save the economy.

    Oil prices have crashed, throwning Nigeria’s earnings off balance.

    “We are committed to the development of outgrower scheme by providing local, value added products and services that meet the basic needs of the populace,” Dangote said.

    The Dangote Rice Farm Ltd, will run an initial pilot in Hago-Fadama, Kafin Hausa and Auyo areas, which will see Dangote Rice developing small holder farmers by providing quality inputs (certified seeds, fertilisers, agro-chemicals and petrol), improved agricultural practices and technology to increase yield and produce quality rice paddy, which will  be bought  from them by the company.

    The Nation learnt that the outgrowers’ programme in Jigawa State would create over 10, 000 direct and indirect jobs for the host communities. Over the period, aside the outgrowers aspect of the investment, Dangote Rice plans to plant 150,000 hectares of long grain white rice and produce nearly one million tonnes of high quality par boiled white rice for sale into the Nigerian market.

    It was also learnt that Dangote Rice Farm Ltd has a deliberate policy in place to procure 30 per cent of its rice production from local farmers who will be developed into outgrower groups. According to Dangote, these outgrowers will be simultaneously developed alongside the company’s commercial farming operations.

    On why he forayed into rice farming, Dangote said: “Before the discovery of oil, our economy was built around potentials from our palm oil, groundnut, cotton, and rubber plantations. Now the price of oil has plummeted from a peak of $116 per barrel in June 2014 to as low as $29 per barrel in January 2016, this means there is huge loss of revenue to the government.”

    He expressed regrets that the nation’s agricultural commodities and food imports bills averaged over N1 trillion in the past two years of 2013 and 2014, with foods like sugar, wheat, rice, fish accounting for 93 per cent of the total cost of imports. He described the situation as unacceptable.

    While further justifying his investment in rice cultivation, Dangote pointed out that the situation the country has found itself needs a reversal. According to him, Nigeria spends nearly $1.8b per annum importing approximately 3.2 million MT of rice to feed its population. These, he said, are foreign exchange that could be used on more impactful social development interventions if they were not needed for food imports.

    Currently, average rice yield in the country is between 1.8 and 2.5 metric tonnes per hectare (MT/ha), depending on the region and the crop (wet or dry) and with or without irrigation. The 1.8 MT/ha is significantly lower than the best practice yields in Africa of 9.2 MT/ha generated in Egypt.

    Locally produced rice is more expensive than imported rice due to the high cost of production relative to the low yields in the country because of poor agronomic practices. In addition, the government of Nigeria has implemented policy incentives that encourage investment in domestic rice production and milling.

    Dangote, however, regretted that huge amounts were expended on food items that the country has potential to produce locally with attendant losses of employment and wealth creation opportunities. “Yet the allocation of foreign exchange to import these items continually deplete the foreign reserves,” he stated, adding that the outgrowers’ scheme has been designed as a one stop solution for the rice value chain.

    During the rice seedling distribution, Minister of State for Agriculture, Senator Heneiken Lokpobiri, lauded the initiative of Alhaji Dangote, saying his intervention in the government’s efforts at providing food security for the citizenry, creating jobs and reducing dependency on food importation is appreciated.

    According to him, a whooping sum of $20 billion is spent on importation of food items that could be produced locally, a situation he said Dangote rice investments would help reduce

    While expressing the government readiness to provide all the needed support to make the scheme a success, the minister said government is putting in place a strategy that will make farmers have greater access to farm implements to help them produce with ease.

    The Special Adviser to Alhaji Dangote on Rice and Coordinator of the outgrowers’ scheme, Mr. Lulu Carlos, explained that 6.1million metric tonnes (mmt) of rice is consumed annually, but not more than 2.6 million metric tonnes are produced locally, leaving the rest to importation.

    Lulu said: “We are happy to start today the partnership with the first outgrowers’ bloc of 200 hectares, shared among eight communities. I have seen the same project grow in my country, Brazil, whereby from 2.5 Mt tons in the beginning to today we reached 9 tons of paddy rice per hectare in productivity’’.

    Jigawa State Governor Alhaji Badaru Muhammed Abubakar thanked the Dangote Rice Limited for choosing Jigawa as the pilot state for the project. He pledged the readiness of his administration to provide all necessary support to the project. He said the project was in line with his government’s commitment to improve agriculture and industrialise the state for job creation and poverty eradication.

    The governor assured Dangote Group of the state government’s support in making any policy and intervention that will make the investment profitable and generate jobs for the teeming population of the state.

  • ALSCON to begin production soon

    ALSCON to begin production soon

    The Aluminium Smelter  Company of Nigeria (ALSCON) in Akwa Ibom State is to begin production soon, Managing Director, Mr. Dimitry Zavyalov has said.

    He told the Clan Head of Ikpa Ibekwe and his council in Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom State that the company would bounce back for optimal productivity, irrespective of the difficult period it is facing.

    “The Management of  UC-RUSAL Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (ALSCON), the new owners of ALSCON, will not relent in exploring available possibilities with appropriate authorities for ALSCON to come back to live,’’ Zavyalov said

    The ALSCON MD stressed the importance of aluminium and the technicalities that are involved. He said the production of aluminium products require professionals.

    Zavyalov, however, said only committed workers would be re-absorbed when the company resumes production soon, adding that the management had commenced steps that would yield positive results for the company and the host community when production starts.

    He explained that negotiation for connecting the company to the national grid was in progress. He reiterated the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN)’s commitment to expedite action for the work to complete on schedule.

    In his remark, the Clan Head of Ikpa Ibekwa, Etebom Akpan Akpan, thanked the Managing Director for the visit and for relating with the host community. He expressed displeasure with the challenges facing the company, saying that the community was worried about the situation in ALSCON.

    Akpan said the community was proud to be associated with the Management of ALSCON especially for working in close consent with the appropriate authorities as well as carrying the community along towards the resuscitation of ALSCON.

    The Clan Head pledged his continued support towards the commencement of production. He called on the Federal Government to appreciate the economic viability of ALSCON to the nation by ensuring that ALSCON resumes soonest.

  • Prioritise forex allocation to auto firms, council urges CBN

    Prioritise forex allocation to auto firms, council urges CBN

    The National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) has urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to prioritise foreign exchange (forex) allocation to the automobile industry.

    NADDC’s Director of Policy and Planning, Mr. Luqman Mamudu, who made the appeal in Lagos, said it would enable the local manufacturers to acquire critical components for production and to safeguard their investments.

    He said it was essential that forex allocation to the sector was prioritised since the essence of the automotive policy was to boost local capability and restrict importation of used vehicles. He said scarcity of forex is undermining the development of the industry.

    “At present, the local assemblies can produce 210, 000 vehicles per annum. We believe that with encouragement from government, it can improve. But most assemblies are facing challenges of sourcing for foreign exchange for critical input, which has led some to lay off staff. To sustain the auto industry, local assemblies need encouragement from the government to access foreign exchange for production,’’ he said.

    Mamudu stressed that the automotive industry was a critical sector capable of creating jobs and impacting on other sectors of the economy. He said the automotive industry was capable of driving the agricultural sector because farm tractors were produced by the automotive industry.

    “It also drives consumer goods like washing machines, motorcycles, boats used in the marine industry. The automotive technology is really versatile, that is why developed countries do not joke with the industry. We cannot keep importing vehicles. We must develop our capacity locally, so that we do not continue to rely on other countries,” Mamudu said.

  • ‘Africa’s growth outlook good but……’

    Growth in Africa is expected to average over four per cent over the next five years, but is still heavily commodity-dependent, according to a report by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

    The Institute in its report, ‘Economic insight: Africa Q1 2016’, pointed to good news for African economies, but warned that manufacturing still accounts for a small share of output.

    The accountancy and finance body in the report made available to The Nation, however, said the old model of exporting raw materials is becoming unsustainable.

    The report noted that Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is projected to average 4.3 per cent between 2015 and 2020. Nigeria, the largest economy on the continent, is expected to contribute significantly to Africa’s economic expansion – at an average real rate of 4.8 per cent per year between 2015 and 2020, contributing over 25 per cent to the continent’s forecast growth in this timeframe.The report said in the East Africa region, Kenya’s economy would expand by around six per cent during the 2017 to 2020 period.

    It attributed this to Kenya’s relatively diversified economy and comparatively low commodity dependence, which bonds well with the country’s economic growth outlook. Regional Director, ICAEW Middle East, Africa and South Asia, Michael Armstrong said: “Africa is the most commodity-dependent continent on earth. Africa’s economies increasingly need to create a hospitable environment for companies in the manufacturing and services sectors to drive growth, as the old model of growth driven by exports of raw materials is out-dated.”

    Armstrong added that the East African region is embracing the use of renewable energy to leapfrog older power generation technologies, while also reducing the need to extend the national energy grid to remote villages.

    The report noted, for instance, that Kenya is ranked the seventh highest producer of geothermal power globally after it recently unveiled the second phase of the Olkaria geothermal plant.

    Olkaria is the biggest single- turbine geothermal plant in the world. However, Kenya continues to face its own unique challenges. The report said the country’s unwarrantable fiscal situation is the primary reason why both Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings downgraded the country’s outlook from stable to negative last year.

    However, the report also pointed out that the Kenyan Government has taken important steps towards fiscal consolidation by preparing a supplementary budget that plans to reduce both development and recurrent public spending in the current fiscal year.

    Tom Rogers, Associate Director, Macro Consulting at Oxford Economics, said: “A clear plan for preventing fiscal slippage will be needed to underpin confidence in public finances and economic stability. The government’s recognition of these economic concerns will be needed to address these issues and instil some confidence in the country’s economic outlook.”

  • Erisco’s N300m tomato puree plant to create jobs

    Erisco Foods Limited, a member of the Erisco Bonpet Group, has concluded plans to employ over 50,000 workers when its multi-million naira tomato paste company begins production in a few months time.

    The company, said to be the largest in Africa and the fourth largest in the world, was inaugurated last Friday. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Erisco Group, Chief Eric Umeofia, said tomato paste production would stop the annual wastages of over 75 per cent of fresh tomatoes across Nigeria.

    “If we continue with the good policies of the present administration, there will be nothing like a tomato glut anywhere in Nigeria in the next two years. “We as off-taker will produce and process to meet our local demands and export to earn foreign exchange, provided government continues to support manufacturing,” he stated.

    He noted that for the company to fast-track its backward integration programme, it has developed a technology that synchronises its existing machines to produce tomato paste and ketchup from fresh tomatoes.

    “Our backward integration programmes planned for Jigawa, Sokoto and Katsina will generate employment and prosperity for 50, 000 Nigerians within three years,” he stated.

    Umeofia said his Lagos company had an installed capacity of 450,000 metric tonnes per annum, making it the biggest in Africa and fourth largest in the world. He, however, urged the government to direct heads of government agencies in the industrial sector to prioritise local manufacturers over their foreign counterparts.

    While urging Federal Government to sustain the formulation of policies that enhance the production capacity of manufacturers, he pleaded with government to stop giving undue advantage to those he called ‘briefcase’ foreign investors. These, he said, are investors who camouflage as industrialists but whose primary interest is to import finished goods as raw materials without paying taxes or the relevant customs duties.

    The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Babachir Lawal, said government would continue to support the growth of indigenous businesses, especially in this period of economic downturn. Lawal, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Economic Affairs Office, Mr. Williams Alo, said the current economic reality calls for a decisive policy thrust to address issues which must be pragmatic enough to leverage on.

    He said:”The major concern of government in this present circumstance is to continue to make policies and reforms as well as restore confidence to stabilise the economic fundamentals and also provide the necessary infrastructural platforms for industries to thrive on.

    “Government will continue to intervene in policy formulation towards protecting our national interest and in the process providing a conducive atmosphere that will make production in Nigeria profitable, attractive and worth engaging,” he assured.

    In his remarks, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah, said 150 million metric tonnes at the cost of N170 million of tomato concentrates is imported into the country annually.

    Represented by a Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Alhaji Aminu Bisala, Enelamah noted that local production of tomato paste would save Nigeria foreign exchange and create employment.

    Nigerian first lady, Hajia Aishat Buhari, who performed the commissioning, called on local manufactures to emulate Umeofia. She said: “Erisco has contributed to the growth of the local farmers in most states in the North where tomato farmers are located. I call on Nigerians to patronize Erisco Foods.”

  • Fear as substandard steel products flood market

    Fear as substandard steel products flood market

    Reinforcement bars are critical to maintaining the integrity of concrete used in construction. According to experts, a compromise can lead to building collapse. Yet, some manufacturers have flooded the market with substandard iron and steel, putting lives and property at risk. The manufacturers are also defrauding the government in underpayment of taxes and levies. Assistant Editor CHIKODI OKEREOCHA reports.

    Manufacturers of substandard iron and steel products are on the prowl. This has raised fears of possible collapse of more buildings across the country.

    The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) raised the alarm that substandard had iron and steel products have flooded the market. The agency said it took painstaking monitoring and enforcement by its task force to discover that most manufacturers of the products are now cutting corners on the required standards.

    SON, through its immediate past Director-General, Dr. Joseph Odumodu, said steel products that were supposed to measure 16 millimetres (mm) in diameter were discovered to measure only 14mm. This, according to him, falls short of acceptable standards by 2mm with a significant impact on the overall strength. Those that were supposed to measure 12mm measured only 10mm in diameter, while those that should be 10mm were only eight mm.

    The diameter of the steel products, which standards have been compromised by local steel manufacturers, is not the only infraction that pushed SON into the panic mode. The agency also observed serious violations in the length of various units of steel products.

    “The length of a unit of steel bar is supposed to be around 12mm, but after our enforcement exercise, we discovered that each unit of product in the market had lengths that were short by as much as 2mm,” Odumodu said.

    The obviously worried former DG broke the news  at a press conference  in Lagos. He said apart from violation of standards in terms of physical properties like diameter and length, the manufacturers also failed to meet acceptable standards in the area of chemical properties such as carbon and manganese content. With regard to the products’ carbon content, which is an impurity, per unit product, the SON chief stated that most products in the market at the moment had in excess of 0.37 per cent. This, he said, violates the stipulated standards for iron and steel products coded as NIS 117 of 2004 and BS 4449 of 2005.

     

    Manufacturers short-change government

    Going by disclosures by the Standards monitoring/regulatory agency, the activities of the manufacturers of substandard iron and steel products have also left Federal and state governments holding the short end of the stick. The Nation learnt that the manufacturers totalling about 20 companies in the country are also defrauding and short-changing Federal and State Governments in terms of payment of adequate taxes and levies.

    Hear Odumodu: “The kind of feedback we got from our survey showed that most of them never had invoices. We have a situation where people pay N200 million for a consignment without an invoice. They just say pay into a certain account; there is no invoice; there is no Value Added Tax (VAT). It became also obvious that they are also short-changing the Federal Government of Nigeria because if there are no documents to show the cost of the product as against other applicable taxes, it means that the Federal Government is being short-changed.”

    For him, it was perhaps, the height of unpatriotic attitude. He recalled, for instance, that the action of the manufacturers came at a time the agency was working on getting government to introduce a backward integration policy in the sector similar to the one that turns the fortunes of the cement sector around, leading to almost 90 per cent of Nigeria’s cement requirements being met by local manufacturers.

    His words: “Our plan was how we could work with them to ensure that government comes up with a policy to support made- in-Nigeria steel products. The next phase for us was how to lobby so that government could bring up a policy like we had for cement and others, because at that point we already had almost 90 per cent of the Nigeria’s cement requirements being met by local manufacturers and that was actually where we were.”

    He, however, expressed regrets that towards the end of last year, SON’s monitoring started showing that there were challenges. “Apparently some of these challenges were based on the survival instincts on the part of the manufacturers, because we started observing that a number of issues were cropping up that showed that they were beginning to put in the market substandard steel products,” he alleged.

    It is easy to see why SON is agonising over the development. Sometime in 2012, the agency celebrated the sanitisation of the re-enforcement bar market. SON insisted at that time that manufacturers should ensure that they had relevant equipment for chemical and other kinds of tests including having unique identification marks for all their products in the market.

    According to the DG, the only challenge the agency had at that point was for the imported re-enforcement bars, which of course, it finally also brought on the same fold. “We also set up a task force to monitor them on monthly basis and things were looking up,” he added, pointing out that the first major alarm that things have started falling apart was around September 2015.

     

    More building collapse looms

    The preponderance of substandard steel products in the market has fuelled fears that more buildings may collapse across the country. “Most of the re-enforcement bars in the market today are substandard, and that is why we felt that it was important we alert Nigerians especially people within the building industry, construction, structural engineers and all those kind of people who are involved in this business,” Odumodu said.

    It was not a false alarm. The former SON chief recalled, for instance, in June 2014, a 5-storey building that was meant to be a school for children came down in Onitsha, the commercial city of Anambra State, southeast Nigeria because of the use of substandard building materials.

    The building, which was completed, collapsed before it was commissioned. It was meant to house about 400 children. Although no life was lost, he said “we would have actually had an accident that would have killed more children than a Boeing 747 coming down. So, that gives you an idea of how bad or how fatal the situation can become.”

    The Nation learnt that part of the problem in ensuring standards in the steel industry stems from inability to create batching within the industry. Odumodu explained further: “If manufacturers made a product in the morning and another one in the evening, they cannot differentiate between the first one and the second one, because every code on the product is the same. That is unlike the food and pharmaceutical sector, for instance, where every batch is coded differently.”

    This means that the regulatory agency relies on the batch manufacturing records within the factories. It also means that members of SON taskforce will have to go back to these factories to find out how many batches they have made, where they were sold to, and then see whether will be able to trace further.

    However, this process, which is no doubt cumbersome, according to Odumodu, “draws issues about products manufacturing and recall procedure because in a lot of countries there are clearly defined recall procedures.” Besides, the agency’s has less than 1, 400 people, which make monitoring and enforcement in the industry difficult.We are not closing down any company

     

    Remedial efforts in top gear

     Despite the lack of products manufacturing and recall procedure in the country and the challenge of limited staff, SON says it is determined to clean the Aegean stable. Consequently, it has taken a number of steps to avert the impending danger posed by substandard steel product.

    “We have decided on a number of actions to immediately reverse the situation. Effective from February 9, 2016, no sale of reinforcement bars can happen in Nigeria without verification scaling, which means that if a batch is normally supposed to weigh 40 tonnes, it must be weighed before it leaves the premises of the seller. If it is not weighed, those people who are dealers will become responsible for whatever violations that may have occurred,” Odumodu announced.

    He added that SON staff will continue to measure the calibration status of the weighing equipment that are used in the factories and any company that is found with the intention of cheating the consumer will be sealed for a minimum of 90 days no matter what the reasons are. He said once the scale does not comply with the calibration status as required by law, the culprit will be punished.

    With regard to carbon content, which actually affects the tensile strength, the DG said SON is now insisting that all furnaces that are not electric arc must be replaced within the next six months, because what manufacturers are currently using does not have the capacity to remove impurities. “So they must elevate their technology to the use of electric arc furnace or any other technology that is better,” he said.

    According to industry experts, most of the irons currently selling in Nigeria come from scraps and scraps are known to have a way of being contaminated. If a manufacturer is using equipment that does not have the capacity to remove contaminants then sooner or later there will be errors, which could be fatal.

    This is why SON is insisting that the electric arc furnace or any better technology must be effectively employed within the next six months. “If manufacturers require some assistance in ensuring that they are able to bring those equipments fast enough, we would assist”, SON volunteered.

    Also, all iron and steel products must now carry clearly stated identity marks. This was sequel to the agency’s discovery that some products in the market either did not have identity marks or some of the marks were blurred, which makes if difficult to say a particular product is from A, B, C manufacturer.

    “If your own mould, for any reason, has a challenge, stop manufacturing and correct it. We are also insisting that within six months, you must also state the diameter explicitly on the ribs of the irons besides carrying out chemical analysis on all batches and these records should be available for inspection of our compliance officers,” Odumodu said.

    Stating that the message is for manufacturers, dealers, and retailers who constitute the three major levels within the steel industry value chain, he warned that  anybody or company that fails to comply risked closure and prosecution.

  • Youths to benefit from Fed Govt’s 2016 empowerment

    Youths in agriculture would benefit from the 2016 empowerment programme, which is starting soon, an official in the Lagos State office of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Mrs. Abiodun James, has said.

    Speaking on Wednesday in Lagos, on the sideline of the election of executives of the Association of Youth for Unity in Agriculture (AYUA), she said some of the members of the association had benefited from the FMARD’s empowerment and promised that with an updated data, other members would be contacted in the future.

    “They are part of the FMARD. Whenever the Federal Government has anything for the farmers, we will contact them because we have their data. Some of them have benefited from the ministry over the years, especially under the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA),” Mrs. James said.

    She recalled that there was a time they were given fertilisers, feeds, seeds, while people in aquaculture were given juveniles and feeds and those in the poultry business sector were given feeds also. “They have shown that they are serious and they will benefit more. When the 2016 empowerment starts soon, they will be contacted,’’ the FMARD official said.

     

     

  • Adamawa introduces micro-credit scheme for informal sector

    The Adamawa State Government has introduced a micro-credit scheme to accommodate the needs of the informal sector, its Commissioner for Information, Alhaji Ahmad Sajoh, has said.

    Speaking at a forum in Abuja on Wednesday, Sajoh said: “We have an empowerment programme, we call it `Bindo for Social Change’ and it involves a micro-credit scheme, and that micro scheme is supposed to identify people who are productive within the informal sector.

    “We want to re-organise the informal sector because for a very long time, we have neglected the informal sector in this country; we were dealing with just the formal sector. But the man who buys just one `damy’ of sugarcane, prepares and pushes it in the wheel barrow is doing something productive; people have neglected him.”

    The Commissioner also said the woman who prepares dawadawa or kulikuli, the blacksmith, the carver who caves the pestle and the mortar; are people who have been neglected, but are contributing to the economy. “We say, lets prepare and give them small loan that will change their lives and see if they can develop a productive mechanics that have a value chain,” he explained.

    He stated that the government, through the scheme, would create a value chain for the informal sector, so that the economy could be driven from that level. According to him, those who would benefit from the scheme would fill a form, which would be signed by the ward head.

    Sajoh added that this would authenticate the true identity of the beneficiaries and the business the individual is into, so that money would not be collected by the wrong people and thereby short change the government.

    His words: “If you fill the form, it must be signed by the `mai angwa’ who will authenticate that you live in that area and that you do that business you claim you are doing. He takes the form to the village head, who will authenticate mai angwa signature by signing on that form; he takes it to the district head, district head authenticates the signature by signing on that form.’’