New Telegraph

Govt pledges support for fish farmers to boost production

The Federal Government has pledged its commitment to assisting the fishery value chain to boost production. Specifically, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammad Abubakar, made the pledge when leaders of National Fish Association of Nigeria (NFAN) visited him in Abuja. Describing fishery as a vital sector of the agro-economy, he stressed the need to provide required intervention to promote fish production.

“Of course, fish is very important in the agricultural value chain and I am surprised that to date, your association has not been benefiting anything, it shouldn’t be so,” Abubakar said. While promising to support in any way possible to improve businesses across the value chain, the minister assured the association of the ministry’s intervention in subsidising the cost of grains used in producing fish feed. “We have grains and I can include you in what we are going to do.

It is there, it is just a matter of time for the release,’’ he added. Also, he promised to look into the demand of the association to explore possible areas of cooperation. Earlier, the National President of NFAN, Ladan Aliyu, appealed to the ministry to extend its intervention programmes to the fishery subsector to boost fish production in the country.

Aliyu, who lamented the long period of neglect of the fisheries industry, said that the quest for government intervention was prompted by the necessity to boost fish production to meet local demand and promote export. “We are determined to accelerate local production from the current 1.1 million metric tonnes to meet the annual national consumption requirement of 3.5 million metric tonnes which will translate to self-sufficiency,” he said. To achieve this, the NFAN national president requested the establishment of an integrated fish processing centre, one each in the six geo-political zones as a pilot to mitigate postharvest losses. Also, he stressed the need to create a special funding scheme for micro, small and medium enterprises in the fishery value chain as grants or loans with farmer-friendly low-interest rates.

Read Previous

Nigeria’s plant protein market to hit $211.8mn by 2027 –Report

Read Next

IAR&T releases new crop varieties to farmers

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *