A BAG OF RICE INCREASED FROM N9500 TO N13000

The price of rice is rising steadily ahead of the festive season. On Monday, this week, the price of rice has risen from 31 per cent and 36 per cent.

This increase started way back in October, with another sudden surge in November and is expected to go higher in the coming weeks.

At the Daleko Market in Lagos, where most distributors sell the commodity to retailers, its price in the last few weeks has risen from N9,500 to N13,000 for 50kg bag of the big seed rice and from N8,000 to N10,000 for the small seed.

Although prices vary for other brands of Nigerian rice, which is the term used for the varieties brought into the country through the Nigerian ports; the price is expected to rise further in the next few weeks to N14, 000.

A distributor with Kambel Rice Limited, Ms. Uzoma Okeke, who spoke with our correspondent, said the imported rice had become expensive since the import duty was raised by 35 per cent in January this year.

“Everybody sells as they like but the agric rice that we now sell for N10,000 was N8,000 and some others that we sell between N11,500 and N13,000 were N9,500. So, for the festive season, we expect it to rise to N14,000 or N15,000,” she said.

 In other major rice markets in Lagos including Mile 12, Sango Ota, Iddo and Alaba, , traders sell within the same price range.

As of last week, some operators of popular warehouses in Lagos serving as depots for rice told our correspondent that they had run out of supplies.

A representative of IBB Warehouse at the Mile 12 Market, who gave his name as Balogun said,

“Nobody is hoarding rice like before. If you go round the market, there is no rice at all,” he stated.

A distributor at the Sango Ota Market in Ogun State, who identified himself simply as Ahmed, told our correspondent that distributors in the market did not have imported rice, adding that many were selling Cotonou rice such as the Spring, Tomato, Royal Tie brands.

He said, “The Federal Government gave 2016 for the local rice to flood the market but we are not seeing any signs yet. If you go round this market, you will hardly find it; they are just encouraging smuggling which is killing the rice market.”

Our correspondent also found out from the Shipping Position, a daily report by the Nigerian Ports Authority, that all of the vessels expected at the Tin Can Island and Apapa Ports, up till November 30, none contained rice.

The report indicated an estimated 87,750 metric tonnes of rice was imported into the country between January and September, 2013 as against the 1.78 million metric tonnes for the same period in 2012.

Official importation of rice began to drop when the Federal Government increased import duty after it disclosed that about $150bn would be spent to meet the country’s annual rice demand by 2050 with the import of an estimated 36 million metric tonnes.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, had said that the country was the largest importer of rice in the world. And with the rise in population, the demand for rice would rise from the current five million metric tonnes to 36 million metric tonnes.

He said the situation called for a radical action; hence the need to encourage the production and milling of local rice. He stressed the need to raise the tariffs on imported brown and finished rice to discourage imports.

The minister gave the brands of local rice being cultivated as Miva and Ashi from Benue, Abakaliki rice from Ebonyi State and Umza rice from Kano.

But an investigation by our correspondent showed that the local rice was still not available in the market.

And where it is available, it is sold in cups or in a few cases, in 50 kg bags from N28,000 to N30,000, depending on one’s bargaining power.

“Nigeria doesn’t have rice; if there is local rice, it should be in the villages because here in the city, there is nothing like local rice,” a trader at Daleko market said.

The ban on rice importation, causing scarcity of the commodity, has reportedly increased the activities of smugglers, who bring in rice through the Cotonou border.

The President of Rice Millers, Importers and Distributors Association of Nigeria, Mr. Tunji Owoeye, who spoke with our correspondent on local rice production, said the Federal Government’s incentives for local rice processing had only increased the production of paddy rice, not the finished product that could be sold in the market.

According to him, smuggling remains a major problem in the production of local rice in the country.

“If a bag of smuggled rice is sold between N7,000 and N8,000 and a bag of paddy goes for N6,000, how will local companies cope when they still have to spend almost that amount or even more to process the rice? This has made many of the processing companies to close shop since they are not competing well,” he said.