President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to blacklist any firm, including its owners and top management, caught smuggling or dumping any of the restricted 43 items into Nigeria.
The Nigerian President gave the directive to the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, who reportedly disclosed to newsmen on Friday in Abuja during a meeting with industry stakeholders who are majorly oil palm producer.
According to the apex bank’s chief, the disclosure was a strict presidential directive that palm oil importation must stop and the CBN is determined to assist its producers to produce enough for local consumption and even export.
- The Presidential directive also includes an initiative for the apex bank to expand and provide support to firms and individuals that want to expand the production of ten different commodities in Nigeria.
- According to the Central Bank’s governor, the ten different products listed include are rice, maize, cassava, tomatoes, cotton, oil palm, poultry, fish, livestock dairy and cocoa.
- Further details revealed that the CBN disbursed the sum of N30 billion to oil palm producers, with a view to ensuring a massive production of the commodity in the country.
Recall, that Nairametrics earlier reported CBN’s plan to use all its instrumentality of being the regulator for Nigerian Banks to provide all details about smugglers and dumpers, and equally block their bank accounts.
“Smugglers and dumpers are the major sabotage to the country’s economic policies. Nigeria is very good at making brilliant economic policies but we have identified smugglers and dumpers as those who sabotage these policies and we have decided we will deal with them and the strategy we came up with is that we will not bother ourselves.” – Emefiele
The big picture: The federal government of Nigeria has acknowledged the need to boost the non-oil sector, in order to bring diversification to the Nigerian economy. Hence, the CBN’s defiant move to put drastic measures across to stop smuggling and dumping in Nigeria.
- Similarly, in order to further drive home its export strategy, the CBN has officially unveiled the Export Facilitation Initiatives (EFI) targeted at boosting commodity exports in the non-oil sector of the Nigerian economy.
- This is contained in the circular just published by the apex bank on Friday, 14th June, in line with the approval by the bankers’ committee at its 343rd meeting, for the commencement of the EFI to complement the government’s efforts to foster growth in the non-oil sector of the economy.
Under the initiative, as highlighted by the Central Bank, the focal commodities for value chain development would be cocoa, cashew, palm oil, Shea and sesame seed.
