Leadership (Abuja)
Christiana Esebonu
10 November 2008
Abuja — Vice President Goodluck Jonathan will, on November 24 to declare open the National Forum on Rice Development.Over 300 participants are expected to converge in Abuja for the at Transcorp Hilton Hotel beginning at 9am.
The event, has the theme, "Nigeria Rice Investment Forum (NIRIF) 2008- Creating the Enabling Environment for Increased Rice Production in Nigeria and West Africa."
The sub-theme is "Increasing Opportunities for Production and Processing of Rice by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)". It is being organised by the NEPAD Business Group-Nigeria (NBGN) in partnership with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, (NESG); the Presidency; other representatives of private sector bodies in the rice sector and relevant government ministries and departments. The forum is expected to bring service providers of credit and inputs as well as business development corporations, processors, farmers and state government officials together in order to create opportunities andopenings that would lead to setting up of rice production and processing projects in Nigeria and West Africa.
A cursory industry statistics put household consumption of per-boiled rice at 5 million tons per annum, amounting to an average per capital consumption of 30kg per person in Nigeria.
The story is the same in the West African sub-region; Senegal for instance, has a per capital consumption of 90kg per person.
A significant part of these consumptions are imported from Asia, notably Thailand, India, Vietnam and China. Other important sources of supply of rice to Nigeria and the West African sub-region are the United States and Europe.
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