Nigeria, despite its commitment of over N170 billion to improvement of self-sufficiency in sugar production, has spent over N2 trillion on importation of raw sugar amidst the National Sugar Master Plan that has lasted over a decade. The National Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) firstly surfaced in a 2008 Federal Government directive requesting the development of a roadmap to attain self-sufficiency in production of sugar within the shortest possible frame of time from the National Sugar Development Council.
According to the plan, the estimated demand for sugar in 2020 will attain the 1.7 million metric tonnes mark. In 2012, according to data from the National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that the federal government imported N238.6 billion worth of sugar into the country. It kept rising until it hit the highest figure in 2021, N425 billion. These figures show that only little has been achieved in reducing sugar imports and improving infrastructure that will drive self-sufficiency.
FG recently renewed the plan due to previous failure.
Based on the actual blueprint of NSMP, within the 10-year period, Nigeria was supposed to have ensured establishment of 28 sugar factories with diverse capacities and cultivation of sugarcane on about 250,000 hectares of land. There has been a recent renewal of the plan by the federal government owing to the failure to put an end to massive raw sugar imports with the proposed period of ten years. As at 2022 after expiration of the initial NSMP, Nigeria ranked third largest sugar importer in the world.
Partial achievement of the NSMP, according to the federal government, is owed to the emergence of Dangote Sugar Refinery, Golden Sugar Refinery and BUA Sugar Refinery. Complementing this statement, Executive Secretary and Chief Executive of the National Sugar Development Council, Zacch Adedeji, stated that relevant stakeholders in the country have been able to ensure the refining of 3.5m metric tonnes of sugar. However, in a meeting in February, he declared that the goal of cutting down sugar imports was not being met.
Buhari launched a N30 billion infrastructure intervention.
To enable speedy achievement of the goal of cutting down sugar imports, Adedeji told the sugar companies that subsequent quota allocation of raw sugar would cease to rely on the size of refining capacity but the extent of compliance with the BIP policy by operators. The council executive further said that the NSMP has made many local companies to increase their investments by significant rates in the backward integration programme to drive more sugar plantation farming and processing.
President Muhammadu Buhari, in 2022, realizing that bridging the gap in achieving sustainable production is not happening anytime soon, launched an infrastructure intervention worth N30 billion to enable visible development in the sugar sector. The intervention was aimed at boosting Sugar Backward Integration Programme projects for irrigation infrastructure on sugar plantations of about 10,000 hectares of land situated at six BIP sites — Numan-Adamawa State, Lafiagi and Bacita-Kwara State, Sunti-Niger State, and Toto and Tunga-Nasarawa State.
Continuous surge in prices of sugar affected the plan.
Head of Media at the NSDC, Yunusa Williams, affirmed that investor apathy has had negative impacts on the projected result of NSMP. He said the programme has to be holistic enough to examine factors responsible for the existing import of sugar into the country. President of the Premium Bread Makers Association of Nigerian, Emmanuel Onuorah, in his comment, attributed import of sugar to continuous increase in the price of sugar. He said the government has failed in provision of an enabling environment that would guarantee success of the sugar master plan.
Related Link
NSDC: Website
Raw sugar imports cost Nigeria N2 trillion+ – Ten-year old National Sugar Master Plan fails to yield success. – Express your point of view.
Some of the reasons for the Ten-year old National Sugar Master Plan failure despite spending N2 trillions and more are due to faulty unreviewed government policies which are unfavorable to businesses especially startups,pandemic and inflation.
while the high cost of importing raw sugar is a challenge for Nigeria, it also presents an opportunity for the country to develop its domestic sugar industry and promote economic growth and development.
Look at the extent it costs us to import raw sugar. This is why we need to become a grand producing state. We should produce what we consume and even export it to other countries.
Government Policies have been on favourable to must businesses in Nigeria. Such is the case of the 10 years Master plan on sugar that failed. Several factors played in the failure which include the monetary policy, inflation, the farmer-fulani herders crises, COVID 19 pandemic and though insignificant but will have an effect on our economy is the Ukraine-Russian war.
A huge of money is been spend on import of sugar to the country why are we not producing our own In stead of spend trillion of naira to imported one
Ten-year old National Sugar Master Plan fails to yield success why not try and make it a success instead of spending money on imported sugar we can produce our own we should start learn on to do thing on our own not all goods we should be importing
Raw sugar imports cost Nigeria N2 trillion+. This is over too much, we should have our own sugar industry in Nigeria because we can’t be spending access of money on importation of sugar, it will really affect the country more
The money is too much, image spending this amount on raw sugar imports cost Nigeria N2 trillion+. Government should promote our own