The Manufacturer Association of Nigeria, MAN has faulted the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari banning foreign exchange on food importation stressing that inflation will soar.
The acting Director-General of MAN, Mr Ambrose Oruche, in an interview with The PUNCH, said the country was not self-sufficient in food production and still needed forex to import some food.
Oruche said with the country not self-sufficient in food production there would be more inflation if was no forex to import food items such as sugar and flour.
He said, “You will see that the last inflation report that was released showed food inflation rate has gone up which shows there is no food sufficiency because what normally happens is if demand is more than the supply, the price of the product will go up.”
“I don’t know where they got the statistics that we are food sufficient because food is not even generic, it has a lot of components.
“I don’t know whether we are sufficient in other products of foods like products like milk, I don’t know the statistics they are using, but we are not sufficient in food production.
“We still need wheat to produce flour, the cost of flour has gone up because we could not get forex to buy flour and the cost of sugar has gone up.
“We still need forex to import food and raw materials that will enable us to produce the finished goods that people can consume.”
