Business and Economy
2025 Project Development Plan: Reps To Initiate Amendment Of NSDC Act
The Executive Secretary/CEO of the National Sugar Development Council (NSDC), Mr. Kamar Bakrin, has shared the Council’s comprehensive plan for accelerated sugar project development in 2025 with the House of Representatives Committee on Industry.
Delivering his keynote address at the Retreat organised for the Committee members in Calabar, Cross River State at the weekend, Mr.
“Our focus in 2024 has been on resetting the agenda and realigned the industry to the high expectations of Nigerians and for us, 2025 is the year of acceleration because this is not a choice but a must, given our macroeconomic realities and the tremendous benefits we know are possible from the cultivation and processing of sugarcane” He stated
In his words”Our key priorities for 2025 are to (i) Accelerate to pace of project development; (ii) Facilitate investment of $5bn into the Sector; (iii) Ensure our priority greenfield projectsare ready for investment; and (iv) Strengthen NSDC’s capacity to develop the sector and we have set out the initiatives to be executed in 2025 that will drive the realisation of these objectives and one of these key initiatives is the amendment of the NSDC Act to address loopholes created by conflicting policies and codify its market protection provisions”.
According to him, this is a key requirement that emerges in all our conversations with the Council’s current and potential investors and financiers for NSDC will be counting on the House Committee for your guidance and support in making this happen in 2025.
“As a result of the implementation of NSMP I, the sugar industry has been a key contributor to Nigeria’s economic growth and a catalyst for the development of the host communities in which they are established as total installed capacity of Nigeria’s sugar refineries has risen to 3million metric tonnes, creating self-sufficiency in the production of refined sugar, securing a steady supply of refined sugar for the domestic market and creating capacity in readiness for the market access opportunities created by the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA)” He stated.
The Executive Secretary noted that the NSMP II has a protected domestic market made attractive by a robust incentive framework which includes a Protective Tariff Regime that is consistent with the various protocols to which Nigeria is a signatory and meant to protect the market for investors who are implementing the BIP, use of an annual Raw Sugar Import Quota Allocation to determine how much sugar can be imported by the participants in the BIP and support of an extensive out-growers scheme to promote inclusiveness and sustainability and stimulate partnership with host communities of the sugar estates and projects.
Others include support for greenfield projects which neither participate in the BIP nor benefit from the NSMP’s fiscal incentives, a mandatory Backward Integration Programme for the Sugar Refineries who bought the publicly-owned sugar estates and supply refined sugar to the Nigerian market and also a two-tier Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, consisting of the Sugar Roadmap Implementation Committee (SURMIC), a multi-agency committee charged with the supervision of the NSMP, and the Sugar Industry Monitoring Group (SIMOG) composed of CEOs of all local Sugar Manufacturing companies, a peer review platform that promotes the credibility of outcomes,” He added.
Also speaking at the retreat themed, “Creating Synergy for Nigeria’s Sugar Industry Development,” the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Industry, Hon. Dolapo Enitan Badru, commended the NSDC Boss and his management team for their performance in the last one year.
He expressed the commitment of the Committee to the institutional steps that must be taken to achieve the Council’s 2025 sugar project development plan stating that properly codifying the NSMP into law is required to improve investor confidence and address the lacuna in the existing law that enables some operators get away with not contributing to the realization of the vision for the sugar industry, adding that all the loopholes will be addressed in the proposed amendment of the NSDC Act.