*Seeks review of establishment Act
The Executive Secretary/CEO of the National Sugar Development Council (NSDC), Mr. Kamar Bakrin, has said the Backward Integration Plan (BIP) under the first phase of the National Sugar Masterplan (NSMP) attracted $1 billion worth of investments.
He said major investors also created over 15,000 permanent and seasonal jobs, and established cane processing factories with a total capacity of 18,000TCD in five active project sites among others.
Bakrin disclosed this at a retreat organised for the House of Representatives Committee on Industry in Calabar, Cross River, over the weekend.
He however, told the committee that actualisation of the comprehensive plan for accelerated sugar project development in 2025 and the NSMP II, could be hampered except certain loopholes in the council's establishment Act were amended.
He said the NSMP II has a protected domestic market made attractive by a robust incentive framework including a protective tariff regime that is consistent with the various protocols to which Nigeria is a signatory.
This, he said was meant to protect the market for investors who are implementing the BIP, use of an annual Raw Sugar Import Quota Allocation to determine how much sugar can be imported by the participants in the backward integration scheme and support of an extensive out-growers scheme as well as promote inclusiveness and sustainability and stimulate partnership with host communities of the sugar estates and projects.
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Others include support for greenfield projects which neither participate in the BIP nor benefit from the NSMP's fiscal incentives, a mandatory Backward Integration Programme for the Sugar Refineries who bought the publicly-owned sugar estates and supply refined sugar to the Nigerian market and also a two-tier Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, consisting of the Sugar Roadmap Implementation Committee (SURMIC), a multi-agency committee charged with the supervision of the NSMP, and the Sugar Industry Monitoring Group (SIMOG) composed of CEOs of all local Sugar Manufacturing companies, a peer review platform that promotes the credibility of outcomes.
Looking ahead, Bakrin said, "These are exciting times for investors and stakeholders in Nigeria's Sugar Industry. We have an unmet and growing local demand of two million metric tons and a deficit in Africa that is expected to expand to 13mMT by 2030.
"There are also tremendous unrealised opportunities in an ever-growing list of sugarcane derivatives such as biofuels, polymers, bioplastics, sustainable aviation fuels, power production, etc."
The lawmakers, however, agreed in principle to take a serious look at the law establishing the council and make necessary amendments that will empower its current leadership to successfully pursue the advancement of the NSMP II.
