240 LGAs get N15b raw materials-based cluster take-off implementation

 Ambrose Nnaji

An estimated sum of about N15 billion has been budgeted for the initial take of the raw materials-based cluster implementation initiative across 240 Local Government Areas of Nigeria.

President, Association of Agricultural and Industrial Entrepreneurs of Nigeria, (AIEN), Chuku Wachuku said each of the benefiting local government will attract about N62.5million per cluster in the first instance depending on the produce that is being embarked upon adding that each cluster of 250people will invest about N250, 000 per entrepreneur for the start.

Wachuku who spoke with The Nation in Lagos said the association which came into being about three years ago was local government driven initiative with membership in all the local governments across the federation.

Stressing the importance of raw materials in moving the economy forward, he said the association had signed a sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with its funding partner the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC). He commended the leadership of the current Director-General of the council.

Meanwhile, Wachuku has urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to support the deposit money banks that bring initiatives that will generate employment and give them interest buy back so that they could loan this money to the entrepreneurs who will create employment.

He said the Association of Agricultural and Industrial Entrepreneurs of Nigeria was an association born by members of who wanted to encourage entrepreneurship development through agricultural and industrial value chain.

He maintained the bedrock of economic development and the basis of employment generation was the Medium, Small and Micro Enterprise (MSME), and agriculture as the largest creator of the economy adding it’s a gathering of all the indices that will create employment and wealth for Nigerians.

We are discussing with companies in China, we are discussing with companies in Turkey and people who need the raw material are talking to us and our platform is one that will tell you the aggregate supply that we have to meet at any time to meet your demand across the board, he explained.

Also the Former Director-General of Operations, National Directorate of Employment (NDE) and Former National President, Nigerian Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI), Wachuku said: “We are going to look at interest rates, I’m sure the CBN will also see the need to support these deposit money banks with lowered interest rates, right now what the CBN is doing is transferring the risk to the deposit money banks and not assuming any”.

He said as a business membership organisation (BMO), AIEN was designed to empower the Nigerian people to create wealth by alleviating the unemployment epidemic in the country. The organisation he stated was aimed at achieving this through expanding business opportunities in the agricultural and industrial sectors of the economy.

It is projected to empowering the Nigerian people, alleviate the widespread unemployment, and create wealth in the country by expanding business opportunities in the agricultural and industrial sectors of the economy, he stated.

Wachuku said clustering would create common services, effective monitoring, and effective consultancy. “We are actually creating a brand new initiative in this country, and the fact will be that every local government across the 774 local governments of the country will have a cluster of advantageous produce in those states”

The impact of this on the nation’s economy is that it will reduce prices, he explained any time supply is over demand the price must go down noting there is so much demand on the economy such that there’s importation disorder in the economy.

It will also create an eco-system that will guarantee the deposit money banks and the development finance institutions the assurance they will recover their money. He noted deposit money banks are now clamouring for good platform which AIEN offers to be able to advance their lending adding the risk factor in the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector is so high such that they are afraid to lend.

“We are coming up with a strategy that will first create funds for our members who will own businesses, when they own these businesses it’s their responsibility to accept the facility, it’s also their responsibility to repay the loan”, he stated.

He agreed it’s the duty of the organization to ensure that these funds are returned. When you inject these capital into the system particularly directed at agriculture, and agriculture value chain you are going to produce food for local consumption, produce food for industrial raw materials, create produce for exports and earn foreign exchange,

When the nation is importing less and less it will impact on the foreign exchange rate regime because there will be less pressure on the dollar, you don’t have too many people chasing the dollar anymore, and they will be earning foreign exchange.

He said arrangements had been concretized to sign off taker agreement with domestic users and foreign users of our produce to avoid waste, adding the era where you produce so much and its wasting away is over.

According to him, clustering will make it easy to locate processing industries such as cassava chips, starch, animal feed, industries among others deriving from the raw materials that will fill that industry adding the problem is always the raw material required to create these industries to actually produce