Nigeria’s 2m tonnes cashew nuts potential still hampered by funding, infrastructure challenges
Temitayo Ayetoto is Businessamlive Reporter.
You can contact her on temitayo.ayetoto@businessamlive.com with stories and commentary.
Nigeria is still being held back from reaching a potential two million tonnes in cashew nuts production by financial hurdles, lack of infrastructure and an inability to complete the processing chain for the produce, businessamlive monitoring of data has shown.
Analysts at Financial Derivative Company (FDC) released a set of 2016 data for the produce in its first week in April commodity update showing that even as the world’s second largest producer of cashew nuts for the year under review, at just 960,000 tonnes, the country was about 1.1 million tonnes short of what it could produce.
In January, Tola Fasheru, president of the National Cashew Association of Nigeria (NCAN), had called on the Nigerian central government to make N20 billion available in its 2018 fiscal plan to support the exportation of the commodity.
Fasheru also sought support for 2,600,000 jute bags for the packaging of cashew nut harvests and a lasting solution to the infrastructural challenges that had become known as Apapa gridlock, preventing access to the ports there and, as a result, adversely impacting exportation.
Since 2010, the commodity has enjoyed an increasing global demand of 53 percent and is listed among the 13 products identified by the current administration’s national strategic plan for export priority.
According to the NCAN, Nigeria earned $402 million from 220,000 tonnes of raw export to Vietnam, India and China between February and December 2017.
The production rose by 100,000 tonnes in 2011 to 175,000 tonnes in 2017, a 43 percent increase with a market value of $1,800 per tonne, as against the previous $300 per tonne.
Domestic commodity prices, meanwhile, remained mostly flat this week with palm oil, tomatoes, garri, flour, sugar, beans and cement unchanged.
The exceptions were 10 kilogramme semolina, which dropped from N3,000 to N2,800. Yam was up at N1,300 from N1,000 and 50 kilogramme rice was down from N15,500 to NN15,000 respectively.
On the international market, wheat futures recorded 0.27 percent drop in price to $180.70 per tonne on suitable US climate, while corn futures were down 0.19 percent to $157.00/tonne. Cocoa prices were up by 1.1 percent to $2,557 per metric tonne and sugar prices went down 0.32 percent to $0.1266 per pound on large supplies.