The Central Bank of Nigeria is working to include sugar and wheat to forex restriction commodities amongst others.

CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, stated this on Thursday in Nasarawa State during an inspection tour of the proposed $500m Dangote sugar processing facility.

According to Emefiele “We are looking at sugar and wheat. We started a programme on milk about two years ago, eventually, these products will go into our FX restriction list.”

He declared the CBN “will provide not only the naira or some of the naira because Dangote is a big man and has equity he’s contributing to the project.

“Hopefully by next two years, we will provide that support. That is our interest here to reduce reliance on importation”.

The decision of the apex bank to include sugar and wheat on the forex restriction list was because the country spends $600m to $1bn importing sugar annually.

Emefiele noted that we must all work together to produce these items in the country rather than import them.

This means that importers would have to source forex from the alternative foreign exchange market instead of the official exchange rate.

The CBN later explained that its decision to restrain importers of milk from the interbank foreign exchange market would encourage investment in local milk production, create jobs and grow the economy.

Nigeria’s annual milk consumption is estimated to be 1.7 million tonnes while local production is about 600,000 tonnes, according to July 2019 data from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

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