Nigeria : Sugar Council urges investors on Africa’s $7b export market
Kamar Bakrin, Executive Secretary of the National Sugar Development Council (NSDC), emphasized the potential for local and foreign investment in Nigeria’s sugar industry, highlighting a $7 billion export market in Africa. With a domestic demand of about 2 million metric tons annually and a $2 billion market value, the sector is poised for growth. Bakrin mentioned favorable macroeconomic conditions, a supportive investment framework, and community-focused projects to ensure sustainability.
The Executive Secretary/CEO, National Sugar Development Council (NSDC), Kamar Bakrin, said the time was ripe for potential local and foreign investors to key into the local production of sugar in the country so as to benefit from the huge $7billion Africa’s export market.
Bakrin told Business Editors in an interactive session in Lagos that the existence of a large and growing domestic demand which is put at about 2million metric tons per annum is one of the reasons the business is viable and profitable.
He added that the export market within Africa is vast, promising and wide enough for investors in Nigeria to explore, saying while the Nigerian sugar market is valued at $2billion, the export market in Africa is even bigger and worth $7billion.
Bakrin also spoke about the macro-economic environment, especially currency exchange rate, which he said has made local production more competitive and importation more challenging.
In his words: “The economics are compelling with high Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) at attainable scale, and available financing that matches the business need.
“Investing in the Nigerian sugar industry is operationally feasible with access to land in secure parts of the country, and available global expertise to support local projects.”
He said this was the appropriate time for investors to stake their money in the business, because as he put it, “there is a strong incentive framework and the government is committed to creating investment-friendly legislation to aid investments that tap into its Backward Integration Plan (BIP).”
He noted that the present is stable, while the future is secure for the industry due to a host community integration model introduced by the Council in which all stakeholders at the community level benefit immensely from sugar projects, thereby ensuring sustainability.
Bakrin said in the new model, operators of sugar projects must not only reserve a certain percentage of their investments for massive host community development in terms of schools, clinics and roads, they are also required to reserve job quotas at managerial levels for the communities and their catchment areas.
He added that the sugar subsector has a wide variety of high-value products that can be produced, such as ethanol, bioplastics and packaging materials, among others.
Bakrin who was appointed by President Bola Tinubu in October last year, said he and his team have been working on putting the right measures and policies in place to drive Nigeria towards self-sufficiency in sugar production in the next eight years.
“We are taking deliberate action to accelerate local production and we have declared 2025 as the year of acceleration for sugar development in the country. We are raising a pool of appropriate funding of the right quantum, cost and tenor to create capacity for this development.
“We are also driving and implementing more aggressive expansion models by existing players, as well as leveraging the entrance of credible local and global business groups and establishment of commercial sugar cane growers to grow the sector.
“Internally, we are upgrading capacity for training manpower for the industry, creating local varieties, multiplying seed cane and driving best practices through extension services,” he stated.
Source Link : https://thenationonlineng.net/sugar-council-urges-investors-on-africas-7b-export-market/
