The Senate Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff, Sen. Hope Uzodinma has called on relevant agencies of the government to check rice smuggling to enhance Nigerian economic development.
Uzodinma made the call during the committee’s meeting with the Minister of State for Agriculture, Heineken Lokpobiri and beneficiaries of rice importation waivers/concessions on Thursday, in Abuja.
He noted that the committee was mandated by the Senate to identify those behind rice smuggling and by the end of the investigation the committee would submit its report to the Senate.
“We have identified the various identities of these people and we will submit the report to the senate in plenary.
“The senate will take the decision on how best to stop those people because it has affected negatively the growth of our economy and the growth of genuine business activities.
The lawmaker said the activities of the smugglers had hindered economic growth, calling on the government to stop the menace.
“What is startling is that these people are in all the sectors of the economy.
“If we continue this way it means that at the end of the day, we will be left with no economy at all and unemployment will continue to swell.
“So the government must take courage to bring these people to book and curb the excesses of these people and ensure there is genuine economic growth and business activity in the country.”
Responding, Lokpobiri said a lot of jobs and trillions of naira were lost as a result of smuggling.
“You cannot actually quantify what we are losing. We must do everything humanly possible to promote local production and milling of rice.
“We are now producing over 17 million metric tonnes of paddy (rice as harvested from the fields, and before it is milled) as against the 7 million metric tonnes produced when we came into government.
“We are still improving on the capacity of rice milling. As government is interested in protecting our farmers: we will do everything legally possible “about smuggling of the commodity.
The minister said the 2014 policy with regards to rice production was meant to encourage local industries to go into rice milling.
According to the minister, rice smuggling is an infraction to the policy.
“The policy then was that if you have a rice mill in Nigeria, you will be given some quota to import rice to be able to cover the gap that existed between the local production and local consumption.
“And if you import rice as a rice miller you are going to pay 10 per cent duty and then 20 per cent levy.
“But the policy was also extended to rice traders who were given quota to import rice and their own was 10 per cent duty and 60 per cent levy.
“The list of companies that you directed us to come with were the companies that benefited from that policy but there were infractions,” he said.
