Chinwe Ochu
18 July 2007
Abuja — In an effort to boost the growth of MSMEs in Nigeria and increase access to quality business, the Federal Government of Nigeria has received $32 million from the World Bank, for production and facilitation of fish farming.
This was disclosed by Executive Secretary, Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), Engineer Mustapha Bello, at the flag-off of implementation of the Catfish Industry Value Chain Development held at the commission's headquarters in Abuja, yesterday. According to him, the World Bank selected catfish farming as an industry that can offer strong potential for growth and provision of employment, based on Business Development Services (BDS) assistance, adding that in addition to the $32 million given by the World Bank, the Federal Government gave N30 million to help in financing the project.
Bello said out of the five firms that expressed interest to handle the project, in collaboration with the World Bank, AquacultureProduction Technology (APT) of Isreal working with twoNigerian companies, namely Quick Projects Ltd and Eagleflair Consulting Ltd; was selected to implement the Catfish Industry Value Chain.
APT Director, Dr Dan Cohen, expressed his company's desire tomake Nigeria a force to reckon with in catfish farming through capacity building and establishment of demonstration farms using the BDS grants to encourage local farmers.
According to him, Nigeria was chosen for this project because it is a huge consumer of fish; importing a million tonnes of fish per annum and also because of its good climate.
He said APT has 12 areas of intervention, in addition to three pilot states- Abia, Kaduna and Lagos, set up to meet the 24 monthsperformance deadline stated in the terms of referencegiven to them by NIPC.
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