FMITI officer wants more functional private sector

 

The schedule officer for pepper, ginger, honey, castor and achia in the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (FMITI), Mr. Ahmed Abdul has emphasised that drivers of private sector under the Federation of Agricultural Commodity Associations (FACAN) must be well positioned with standard capacity to ensure wealth and job creation. Mr. Abdul told Food Farm News last week at the FACAN office in Abuja.

Abdul said that there is need for effective capacity training for organised private commodity associations under FACAN that would ensure meeting global standard of all their agricultural produce towards ensuring more economic empowerment, job creation and wealth creation for the entire nation, adding that FMITI has been trying to ensure facility for capacity building to these organised associations as part of its mandate obligation for efficient private sector.

He advised the private stakeholders on pepper, ginger, castor, honey and achia to upscale their activities towards meeting global standard market, saying that effort is on ongoing by the ministry in partnership with Export Promotion Council (EXPC), Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and other pertinent public stakeholders to provide standard for honey in Nigeria for export purposes.

According to him ‘’ Nigeria has the best honey globally. The challenge is that Nigeria has not been registered as European Union (EU) third country listing. Therefore we cannot export the produce. We need to put standard in place. Effort is ongoing with NEPC, FMARD and others to ensure that is done’’

 He stated that the FMITI is working on achia produce in all the states in partnership with FMARD to organise them in an active registered organisation that would be able to produce standard produce through capacity building towards local and export consumption.