•Says subsidy slumped from N76bn to N2bn

The Managing Director of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), Mr Uche Orji, yesterday disclosed that the restructuring of the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI) led to a crash in fertiliser price from N13,000 to NN5,500.

Speaking at the BusinessDay Breakfast Meeting in Abuja, with the theme: “Macroeconomic Outlook, Innovation and Technology,” Orji noted that the subsidy that was hitherto paid by the federal government on the commodity had fallen from N76 billion to N2 billion.

The NSIA MD, who spoke on the need to pay more attention to how technology could be applied to all sectors of the Nigerian economy, pointed out that with the cleaning up of the system, today, Nigeria has an excess of 10 million bags of the product.

With the programme now handed over to the private sector to manage, Orji stated that any pressure it posed to the balance sheet of the NSIA has now been removed.

“In agriculture, we have done two or three things. But one of the things we have been working on and which proved controversial in some aspect for the last five years, is that the NSIA has been in charge of the presidential fertiliser initiative.

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“A few key points just so that you understand the impacts of this programme. When we started the PFI programme, there were only four fertiliser plants in Nigeria. The subsidy bill that was established was N76 billion. Fertiliser was N13,000 a bag and it was scarce.

“Twelve months after this programme, fertiliser prices dropped to N5,500. We had 20 blending plants working in the country and the subsidy bill was only N2 billion.

“We have now restructured the programme and taking it off our balance sheets, put it back in the hands of the lenders, make people put bank guarantees on it and put up cash so we took pressure off the NSIA balance sheet last year,” he said.

Admitting that many people did not like the restructuring programme, Orji noted that the move had completely transformed the sector.

“The restructuring that we did, we went from a subsidy to now running a plus N5 billion profits on that programme, 52 blending plants in the country, we have 20 million bags of fertilisers , we have 10 million in inventory, excess fertiliser within the country.

“But we are now out. We’ve taken the sector, restructured and we have handed it back to the private sector,” the NSIA boss stressed.

In addition, Orji noted that the other thing, NSIA did in terms of agriculture was to embark on a demonstration farm in collaboration with another company to build a farm in Nasarawa state.

“These are not Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), we made sure we had the right farming practices. So it’s one of the things we’re doing in agriculture and we are going to be running the special agricultural processing zones. That’s also a programme that we will announce next year,” he stated.

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In his remarks, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, lamented that for too long, the nation had not effectively utilised the strong relationship between science, technology and innovation and business.

“Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) serve as the mother of business. It will be difficult for business to thrive without the effective deployment of STI,” he posited.

He explained that agriculture was at least 80 per cent dependent on STI, whether in plants or livestock, the production of seeds that are high yielding, disease resistant and climate smart.

According to the minister, countries with the largest economies in the world, are those that effectively deploy STI to nation building.

Hence, for business to grow faster in Nigeria, and for the private sector to be stronger than they are today, Onu opined that the country needs to effectively deploy STI to nation building.

“The federal ministry of science, technology and innovation is ready and prepared to work with the business community to make our economy stronger, our nation greater and Nigerians happier.

“This is the best way to ensure that we create new jobs, feed ourselves, improve our economy, reduce poverty and recreate the middle-class and make the nation self-reliant for the good of all,” he noted.

Also speaking during the programme hosted by the Publisher, BusinessDay Media Limited, Frank Aigbogun, the Managing Director of the company, Dr. Ogho Okiti, argued that Nigeria has a balance of payment crisis.

Added to that, he explained that the macro-economic instability would not allow any appreciable growth in Nigeria, arguing that there cannot be recovery until the issues were properly situated and sorted out.

“Private investment will not come in when all these things are misbehaving the way they are doing at the moment, including double digit inflation,” he noted.

Thisday