Commodities President wants farmers, exporters more positioned

• Calls CBN to order

The National President, Federation of Agricultural Commodity Associations Dr. Victor Iyama has said that the economy of Nigeria will perform more better through strategic repositioning of farmers and exporters for commercial production and export of the produce respectively.

Dr. Iyama in an interactive session with Food Farm News last week Friday also advised Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to stop dabbling into fiscal policies on commodities and export matters, but pointed it should rather concentrate ensuring naira stability towards macroeconomic growth.

Iyama argued that a better positioning of primary agricultural producers towards mass production should be better pursued through the ministries of Agriculture, and Industry/ Trade& Investment, pointing the CBN involvement in the contracting of the inputs and land clearing for farmers has negated its core monetary mandate. 

He posited that farmers should have been given the whole sum of the anchor borrower loan to procure their inputs and engage reliable service providers of their choice, adding that his organization as apex body of all commodity associations would have monitored the program to achieve effective result with a paltry charges.

The commodities president stressed the need for empowerment of farmers and exporters as a mean of achieving more foreign exchange into the nation’s cover through mass production with farm settlements and preservative facilities as friendly policies are provided for export, saying that some of the recent CBN policies on agricultural commodities are very unfriendly to exporters with the introduction of e-invoicing and payment of $350 upon all other charges.

According to him ‘‘ we need to identify those exportable crops that can earn more foreign exchange and empowered the farmers towards mass production both in tree and arable crops. We need resuscitation of our farm settlements where houses and social amenities will be provided, and land should be cultivated and distributed to farmers in proportions of hectares and you can just imagine the kind of mass production that will happen. But incidentally they prefer anchor programme where very little portion of the sum loan was given to farmers with the rest huge amounts ending in the hands of friends and cronies of the CBN officials’’

 He said further that ‘’ some businesses must be restricted to only Nigerians. The CBN Governor says he wants to introduce e-invoicing to monitor inflow of goods that not properly recorded whereby exporters will have to pay additional $350 upon all other charges and expense on export process of 45-60 days in Nigeria as against five in Togo. All our suggestions on stringent measure of three years imprisonment without option of fine to any defaulter that takes goods out without returning money gets to the deaf ears because they know it is their friends that will be victims’’  

Iyama wanted a policy that defines our export/import policies where anybody would just come in the name of investor and started using our commercial banks’ loan to buy directly from our farmers at the expense of local buying agents, thereby commending the step already taken by the Presidency against foreigners going interior to buy directly from our farmers.

He also commended the lately support of the FMITI in terms of training to his members towards agricultural global standard practices without rejection in some commodities like cashew, soybean, sesame seeds, cocoa etc stressed that the CBN must allow both the FMARD and FMITI to do their jobs while it concentrates more on monetary policy that would stabilise the naira and ensure economic growth for job creation.