The price of broken rice has gone up by 13% in the last week because of demand from Nigeria, reported the Philippines News Agency. The price per tonne is now US $350, according to Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Policy and Strategy Research Institute. Nigeria has already bought 250,000 tones from Vietnam.
Nigeria currently estimates spending $1.3 billion every year to import around 2.2 billion kg of rice to help meet the estimated 3.5 million MT Nigerians consume annually, according to a survey conducted last year by the Dutch Agricultural Development and Trading Company. The report stated that it was wasteful for Nigeria to continue to use its scarce resources in rice importation. Experts cite abundant resources in Nigeria and other West African countries that could be harnessed to create a non-import dependent environment for grain.
Last year, Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources, Alhaji Sayyadi Ruma, announced that domestic rice farmers would have access to a government package to help Nigeria achieve self-sufficiency in rice production. According to Ruma , the major challenges facing local rice production are poor processing, storage, preservation, lack of credit facilities, decayed and inadequate infrastructure, and poor quality of farm inputs.
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