Nigeria’s Agric sector has suffered a major setback after latest reports revealed it is now the 7th largest producer of the Cocoa in the world.
The International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) previously ranked Nigeria as the world’s 4th biggest cocoa producer and is now the 7th crop after its projected output for the 2015-2016 season was lowered to 190,000 metric tons..
According to a text message sent to Bloomberg, president of Cocoa Association of Nigeria, Sayina Riman, attributed the downgrade to Nigeria’s exchange rate policy, lack (of) reliable data, and low synergy between the public and private sectors.
Responding to a text message from Bloomberg, the Minister for Agric, Audu Ogbeh attributed the dwindling cocoa production in the last 30 years to neglect on the part of successive government.
Nigeria was one of the leading producer of the product in the 60s and 70s but greed, corruption and ineptitude on the part of policy makers made the country lose its exulted position to countries like Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Indonesia and Cameroon.
Experts are of the view that Africa’s most populous nation should be exporting finished products to other countries instead of raw materials as the export of finished and packaged products is more valuable to the economy.
Sub-Saharan African countries lack of policy innovation and inability of policy makers to think outside the box is inadvertently creating jobs and bolstering sales and profits of overseas companies. Mac Inc; a chocolate company in the United States, imports raw Cocoa from Cote d’Ivoire.
According to a recent report by the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO), the American company in 2015 made $18.40 billion in net sales from chocolate. The figure is 5 times the $3.50 billion Cote d’Ivoire realised from its Cocoa exports.
We in Nairametrics believe the only way Agric can drive economic growth is when we set up factories and process our own raw materials into finished products for local consumption and to earn dollar revenue.
Also, by setting up these factories, Nigerian government will widen its revenue base, as it will benefit from company income tax (CIT) because companies will pay tax. From Pay as You Go (PAYE) because employees will pay tax and from Value Added Tax (VAT) as consumers will pay tax on consumption.
