People & Money

NIRSAL, Trade Ministry Move to Ensure Food Security, Tackle $12bn Post-harvest Losses

The Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) is collaborating with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment to address the protracted challenges of poor transport, logistics, and storage facilities largely responsible for the post-harvest losses of local farmers.

NIRSAL is leading advocacy for the operationalisation of a Secured Agricultural Commodity Transport & Storage Corridor (SATS-C), which is expected to not only combat post-harvest losses but create jobs and boost the contribution of the agriculture sector to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Speaking at a SATS-C meeting in Abuja on Thursday, NIRSAL Managing Director, Mr. Aliyu Abdulhameed said the Ministry’s commitment to SATS-C exudes hope, adding that the policy, when fully operational, could directly lead to a 5 percent increase in the agriculture sector’s contribution to national GDP by halving the annual post-harvest losses of $12 billion, per World Bank estimates.

Further benefits, he noted, lie in the lowering of food prices, creation of 125,600 direct and indirect jobs, and the heightened possibility of adhering to standards for improved access to export, industrial, and consumer markets.

Also Read: Safeguarding Africa’s Food Systems Through and Beyond the Crisis

Abdulhameed expressed confidence that SATS-C would complement and perfect one of NIRSAL’s business models/concepts known as PH-P3 (Primary Production & Harvest, Primary Processing, Primary Transportation and Primary Storage) which ensures efficient production in the farms and optimum capture of value at harvest by enabling prompt evacuation of produce from farm-gates, and the subsequent haulage of commodities across the country through designated corridors.

SATS-C’s envisaged enabling of seamless movement of produce from production zones to processing zones to markets, Abdulhameed believes, would invariably upgrade agro-logistic value chains, flush blockages, and usher in an era of increased flow of finance and investments into and through agricultural value chains.

“For this reason, NIRSAL is reaching out to enabler institutions, driving necessary dialogues and championing advocacy to support the FMITI in the development and implementation of the SATS-C policy in Nigeria,” he added.

Speaking at the breakfast meeting in Abuja on Thursday, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Otunba Adeniyi Adebayo, while presenting the SATS-C initiative urged other ministries involved in the preparation of the policy document to “execute a common Client Service Charter that will enforce adherence to agreed rules and standards in a bid to accelerate the project.”

Also Read: Small-Scale Traders Crucial to Trade and Investment in Africa Post-Pandemic – Experts

He said that the SATS-C policy framework was a hydra-headed systemic intervention that will facilitate a holistic structuring of nodal service platforms to support seamless Route-to-Market operation for agricultural commodities.

The SATS-C project, he said, “will bring a coherent, harmonized tax scheme to bear on Nigeria’s agricultural logistics sub-sector which is currently leaking revenue through multiple taxation, extortion, and post-harvest losses.”

According to him, there are existing capacities, policies, and structures that are complementary to the operational framework of the SATS-C initiative,” which the government and other stakeholders “intend to factor in as they work on the details of the policy.”

Meanwhile, new initiatives that must be taken on board by the team include Social Engineering, to prepare beneficiaries and users for the SATS-C: Executive/Legislative Intervention to empower MDAs to expand their mandates and capacity building for stakeholders.

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