by crossriverwatch admin
Cross River State will house one of the 6 Cassava Mills that were approved by the Federal Executive Council yesterday in Abuja.
The Council on Wednesday approved N13bn for the establishment of 10 rice mills and 6 cassava mills across the country.
Akinwumi Adesina, Agriculture Minister, who disclosed this to state house correspondents after the meeting, said Nigeria had been producing more food since 2012 but lacked adequate mills to process the increasing cultivation of rice and cassava.
The minister revealed that six cassava mills with a total capacity of 180,000 metric tonnes have been approved by council and will be located in Ondo, Ogun, Abia, Delta, Cross River and Nasarawa states.
He added that 10 rice mills with total capacity to mill 360,000 metric tonnes of rice were to be located in Kebbi, Zamfara, Kaduna, Niger, Benue, Kogi, Bayelsa, Bauchi, Ogun and Nasarawa states.
He said the mills will be privately managed. “They will not be owned or run by government, they are going to be owned managed and operated by the private sector, it’s part of government’s way of making this available at a term of financing that can be afforded by the private sector. The acquisition of this will be done by the bank of industry.
“It will select the private sector people, they will have the down payment, and the plants are going to be constructed and they have a financing facility for them to own it. Government is just doing its job which is to get things to happen, but the private sector will do every single thing about it.
“There are still those who go around trying to get waivers to import rice and throw us into poverty, this will no longer be possible.”
The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, who joined his Agriculture counterpart to address journalists, said that the 16 rice and cassava mills would be completed within 18 months.
It will be recalled that the Bank of Industry, BOI has an existing partnership with the Cross River State Micro Finance and Enterprise Development Agency, MEDA amounting to 500million for financing small scale agricultural processing in the state.
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