Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, has said that the apex bank is set to place forex restriction on commodities such as sugar and wheat.

Emefiele on Thursday made the disclosure in Nasarawa State during an inspection tour of the proposed $500m Dangote sugar processing facility.

The CBN governor stated that “We are looking at sugar and wheat. We started a programme on milk about two years ago, eventually, these products will go into our FX restriction list.

He added that the CBN “Will provide not only the naira or some of the naira because Dangote is a big man and has equity he’s contributing to the project.

“Hopefully, within the next two years, we will provide that support. That is our interest here to reduce reliance on importation.”

Emefiele further explained that CBN’s decision to include sugar and wheat on the FX restriction list was because the country spends $600m to $1 billion importing sugar into the country annually.

He noted that “we must all work together to produce these goods in Nigeria rather than import them”.

It was gathered that the proposed $500 million Dangote sugar processing plant in Awe, Nasarawa State will save Nigeria some $1 billion and create more than 150,000 jobs.

President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, revealed that they have acquired 60,000 hectares of land in Awe, Nasarawa State to grow “up to one third of Nigeria’s sugar consumption, which is almost a million tonnes”.

He said the initial investment for this project was about $480-500 million noting that the CBN will provide support to make it a reality.

Dangote stated that they have “a very good relationship with the community and stakeholders. This project as you see it, will produce a lot of jobs and as a matter of fact, we have to bring a lot of people outside of this areas into the project to help in terms of employment. We’re talking about thousands of jobs direct and indirect jobs, more than 150,000 jobs”.

 “If this place is up and running, I do not think there will be shortage of power in Nasarawa State. We will be having excess of 90mw of power.

“The project is not just for us to make money from the sugar refinery, but boost economy,” he added.