This was disclosed during the Council’s meeting chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at State House in Abuja.
With the development, foreign buyers will now have to go through licensed local buying agents to do business with farmers.
This came as All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Oyo State chapter, expressed fears that prices of food may rise in 2022, given the exorbitant cost of input.
Chairman of AFAN in the state, Mr. John Olateru, raised the concern in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan, yesterday.
Olateru, who noted that farmers were gearing up for the year 2022 planting season, said: “Prices of chemicals are now more than triple what they used to be. The same goes for fertilisers. Also, land preparation has gone from N5,000 to between N12,000 and N15,000 per hectare.”
According to him, “The cost of cultivating farmlands has gone out of control, and this will affect the prices of the items that will be planted.”
The AFAN chairman also lamented non-availability of foreign exchange for importing farming input.
“Another problem is that, on everything you import, there is 7.5 per cent Value Added Tax that you have to pay. There is also the five per cent minimum duty that you must pay on importation of tractors and other things.
“If you add 7.5 per cent and five per cent, that gives you 12.5 per cent duty on what you are importing, while the official forex is not available. All these will have multiplier effects on the prices of farmers’ output. When people are complaining about high prices of food commodities, they may not know the factors that are driving the costs.”
Minister of Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, said he presented two memos on behalf of his ministry to FEC, one of which was the promotion of agribusiness in Nigeria through right farm gate pricing and ban on foreigners and their representatives from purchasing agricultural commodities at farm gates.
He said: “We finally got approval from FEC for only licensed local buying agents who must be registered by relevant national commodity associations. They are the ones who will, now, be able to buy goods directly from the farmers and sell to the foreigners.
“This way, the farmers will no longer be cheated by these foreigners who just throw money at them and are able to buy their goods.”
The minister said he presented another memo to FEC for the approval of Trade Policy Action Plan with the theme, ‘Unleashing Nigeria’s Development Potentials through Trade and Investment’.
He said the plan, which was also approved by Council, was formulated with a view to utilising trade as another means of generating revenue outside oil, which revenue is on the downward trend.
He said: “The whole idea is because we are not making as much money as we used to from the sale of oil. And because of reduction in the money that comes from that aspect of Nigeria’s revenue generation, we want to utilise trade as a means of generating revenue for the country.”
