The volume of rice importation into Nigeria (in metric tonnes) has declined drastically in 2018, judging by official figures, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said.

The official figures shows that India and Thailand, which are dominant rice exporters to Nigeria, indicated that as at September, the latter had so far exported about 5,161 metric tonnes of rice to Nigeria, while the former sold only a paltry sum of 426 as at July 2018.

Attributing the reduction to concerted effort by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the interventions of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Director of Corporate Communications at the CBN, Mr. Isaac Okorafor said the Bank had not allocated any foreign exchange for the importation of rice this year.

According to Mr. Okorafor, “the figures being bandied in certain quarters were based on unrealistic assumptions such as satellite mapping of farms, expected demand by politicians for election campaigns as well as expected losses from flooding, all of which led to unauthentic conclusions that the country had imported or could import 400,000 more metric tonnes.”

The spokesperson for the CBN further noted that the combined figure of 5,587 tonnes of rice imports from India and Thailand may have been rice imported on not-valid-for-forex basis.

Meanwhile, trade figures for the second quarter of 2018 of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that total imports value was N2,106.7 billion; -16.3 percent lower than Q1, 2018 (N2,518.26 billion) and – 19.9 percent lower than Q1, 2017 (N2,631.65 billion).

The report on the Bureau’s site showed that the value of imported agricultural goods in the second quarter of 2018 (N224.52 billion) increased by 21.7 percent from Q1, 2018 (N184.49 billion) and lower by -3.14% from Q2, 2017 (N231.80 billion).

According to the report, raw materials imports in Q2 2018 (N261.10 billion) declined by -8.3 percent compared to Q1, 2018 (N284.81 billion) and lower by -14.2 percent compared to Q2, 2017 (N304.43 billion).

The solid minerals import in Q2, 2018 (N17.29 billion) increased by 37.0% on a quarter-to-quarter basis (N12.62 billion), but declined by -91.0 percent on a year-to-year basis (N193.16 billion). Energy goods imports in Q2, 2018 (N98.17 million) was 202.6% higher than Q1 2018 (N32.45 million), and 288.5%% higher than Q2, 2017 (N25.27 million).

The NBS reports that the value of manufactured goods imported in Q2 2018 (N1,175.86 billion) declined by -1.2 percent over the previous quarter (N1,189.97 billion) but increased by 1.6 percent over the same quarter in 2017.