Increase funding to research, PAN tells FG

The Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) has call on the federal government to increase the funding of Agricultural Research Institutes and appoint monitoring and evaluation committees to ensure that targets are set up with deliverables for the institutes.

PAN National President, Mr Ezekiel Ibrahim, who made the call recently during a press briefing in Abuja said monitoring and evaluation should involve the local community, relevant professional bodies.

He also called on the government to maintain its ban on importation of frozen poultry products into the country, saying stiffer penalties should be melted our on  violators of the directives to serve as deterrent to others.

He further urged the FG to allow free duty charge on the importation of poultry machines that are not produced locally as against the current practice of putting all agricultural equipment on 5% import duty.

While giving an update on the industry’s current state and the way forward, he stressed the need for the government to peg interest rate on borrowing at a maximum of 3 per cent.

“We are also the major off-takers of rice bran, wheat offal, groundnut cake and others and with our continued determination to create awareness and increase the per capita consumption of poultry products of Nigerians by 50% of our current consumption rate, we are set to create a new revolution in the entire agricultural value chains in Nigeria,” while also urging the government to;“enshrine cohesive policy to encourage private sector investments in agriculture by pegging interest rates on borrowing to this sector to a maximum of 3%.”

On the impact of the COVID-19 as it  affects the sector, Ibrahim said the pandemic affected the sector seriously as the sector lost over N1.5 trillion naira during the period. 

Before we thought of asking the government to approve importation of maize, we had contacted maize farmers on production of maize for the poultry sector, but they were not able to produce. 

“They told us that all they had from their previous farming session had been sold off, so we had to write to the federal government for importation base on the aggregation of the maize needed by our members,” he said

“It is very important that we operate within the purchasing power of Nigerians,” he said.

Ibrahim further call on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to identify the 166 ongoing projects it is funding and the locations across the country so that the association can work with those projects that have correlation with and could benefit the poultry industry.

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