Sugar self-sufficiency: NSDC mobilises $1bn investment, tightens enforcement

The National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) has repositioned its industrial investment opportunities with a $1 billion EPC-plus-finance partnership with SINOMACH of China.

The partnership is part of the N10 billion Sugar Project Acceleration Fund, established with the Bank of Industry, under the Backward Integration Programme (BIP).

The Executive Secretary/CEO of the Council, Mr Kamar Bakrin, in a statement on Sunday in Abuja said it was part of its outlined agenda during a courtesy visit by members of the Abuja Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Directors (CIoD).

He said Ngeria consumed about 1.8 million metric tonnes of sugar annually, with an estimated one billion dollars flowing each year to foreign producers.

Mr Bakrin said the council viewed this not as a deficit to be lamented, but as a ready-made domestic market waiting to be recaptured by Nigerian producers.

According to him, value that the Nigeria Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) 2.0 is designed to retain within the national economy in the form of jobs, rural incomes, foreign exchange savings and industrial capacity.

He noted that the sector’s historical challenge has never been an absence of policy, but the discipline of delivery, a challenge the council was now confronting directly.

“We don’t lack policy. What we have struggled with is world-class execution. The gap is not a farming problem but a governance problem and therefore one that serious, well-run institutions can fix,” he said.

He described NSMP 2.0 as an “acceleration mandate”: a deliberate compression of Nigeria’s path to self-sufficiency, targeting the delivery of about two million metric tonnes of locally produced sugar.

Bakrin said the council’s ambition extends well beyond substituting imports, adding that one of the most generous crops in existence yielding sugar, ethanol, animal feed and electricity and NSMP 2.0 was structured to capture that full value chain.

On enforcement, Mr Bakrin said the Backward Integration Programme had been rebuilt around four principles  qualify, reward, verify and designed to give both government and investors confidence that quota privileges wrre matched by real production on the ground.

Barkin explained that the ₦10 billion Sugar Project Acceleration Fund, established with the Bank of Industry, would finance feasibility studies and project preparation, converting greenfield sites into investment-ready packages.

The ES said packages would in turn feed the $1 billion EPC-plus-finance agreement signed with SINOMACH of China, which would provide a channel for construction and financing once projects were prepared.

The leader of the CIoD delegation, Mrs Fatima Mede, commended the council’s leadership on the visible reforms it was spearheading in the sugar industry and the momentum toward self-sufficiency.

She affirmed the Institute’s readiness to collaborate with the council in all areas of mutual interest as part of its contribution to the advancement of the sector.