FG concessions 20 silos for N6bn

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) yesterday approved the concessioning of 20 out of its 33 silos to private sector operators at the cost of N6 billion.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents on the outcome of the weekly FEC meeting in Abuja, saying the silos, built at different parts of the country.
“Today, we presented a memo to Council, seeking approval to concession the Silos which have been built in different parts of the country over the past 10 years.
A total of 33 Silos exist with a capacity of 1,360,000 metric tons of grains and they are spread almost evenly through the geo-political zones of the country.
He said six of the 33 silos would be retained by the federal government.
“We informed them that the fact that we are concessioning some of the silos does not mean we are reneging on our responsibility to guarantee food security.
We are keeping six of the silos, which is according to international standard; we keep five per cent of all the grains we harvest every year, the rest will go to private sector groups.
“Government will earn N6 billion in the 10-year period of the first instance.
The federal government remains the owner of the silos and at the end of 10 years it can either renew, revoke or takeover the silos and operate them ourselves.
“We have requests for grains from different parts of the world, soya beans, sesame, sorghum and millet.
We also have massive rice production going on and the likes of Dangote and Coscharis going into rice production now need these silos.
So, concession to them means they will organize local groups to produce grains for them to dry properly and store and market when the need arises or even export,” he said.
Also speaking, Minister of Water Resources, Mr.
Suleiman Adamu, said federal government had put in place measures to address reported flood disasters in some parts of the country.
He said water level has risen to 11.19 but has not reached the 12.4 level that lead to flooding in 2012

Leave a Reply