Popular Farms & Mills Limited, a subsidiary of Stallion Group owned by the Vaswani Brothers Sunil, Haresh and Mahesh has commenced work on N162 billion rice project soon after it signed the Memoran-dum of Understanding (MoU) with the Federal Government.

The brothers are currently being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for allegedly evading tax worth N3billion naira on rice imported into the country in connivance with some top officials of Nigeria Customs Service.

The company had started work on the various aspects of the nation-wide agricultural projects in earnest in order to meet the challenging milestones.

The Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources, Dr. Sayyadi Abba Ruma signed the MOU with Popular Foods at a ceremony attended by government officials and a high level ministerial delegation from Thailand.

Speaking before signing the MoU, Ruma noted that the one million hectare Commercial Rice Development project would not only help to make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice production, but would also make the country a net exporter of rice.

Ruma said that the project had the capacity to produce, by 2013, 1.5 million tones of rice per annum.

Sunil Vaswani, Chairman of Stallion Group, said the project would help jumpstart the agricultural sector in Nigeria and expressed appreciation to government for giving his company the privilege.

The project is expected to provide modern milling facilities to achieve self sufficiency and encourage use of fertilizer and other improved inputs as well as the deployment of international best practices to optimise yields in rice farming under both corporate and contract farming models.

The project will benefit areas already identified and designated as Intensive Rice Growing Areas including Kano, Taraba, Benue, Katsina, Kebbi, Anambra, Kaduna, Bayelsa, Ogun and Adamawa.

Sources indicated that strategic partnership agreem-ents have already been signed with large Asian giants in rice farming and milling in order to secure the best available technology and package of practices for Nigeria.

It was learnt that the company had also already commissioned its rice mill in Lagos and is about to commission its Kano rice mill while substantial financial commitments had already been made into the next phase of farming and milling equipment destined for other project locations.