Emefiele said this at a stakeholders’ meeting on the Palm Oil Value Chain held in Abuja.
The meeting was attended by the Governors of Akwa Ibom, Edo and Abia as well as the managers of Dangote Farms, Flour mills, United Food Industries and Dufil Frima Foods Plc, among others.
Emefiele said that it was a sad fact that the country was still importing palm oil in spite of sufficient arable land in the South-South and South-East regions of the country to farm it.
He recalled that in the late 50’s and 60’s, Nigeria was not only the world’s leading producer of palm oil, but it was also the largest exporter of palm oil, accounting for close to 40 percent of the global market share.
He said that right now, Malaysia and Indonesia were the top producers of palm oil and Nigeria the fifth, after getting their seeds and learning how to cultivate oil palm from Nigeria.
“This conversation is indeed important as it forms part of our overall strategy to reduce our reliance on crude oil imports, diversify the productive base of our economy, create jobs and conserve our foreign exchange.
“Despite placing oil palm in the forex exclusion list, official figures indicate that importation of palm oil had declined by about 40 percent from the peak of 506,000 Metric Tonnes (MTs) in 2014 to 302,000 MTs in 2017.
“We intend to support improved production of palm oil to meet not only the domestic needs of the market, but to also increase our exports in order to improve our forex earnings,” he said.
To this end, Emefiele said that all the state governors in South-South and South-East of Nigeria had agreed to provide at least 100,000 hectares each for large scale oil palm farming.
He said that with the help of the state governments, Nigeria could reach self-sufficiency in palm oil between 2022 and 2024 and ultimately overtake Thailand and Columbia to become the third largest producer over the next few years.
“As part of our Anchor Borrowers Program (ABP) and Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS), the CBN will work with large corporate stakeholders and small holder farmers to ensure availability of quality seeds for this year’s planting season.
“We will also ensure the availability of agro-chemicals in order to enable improved cultivation of palm oil.
“We will also work to encourage viable off taker agreements between farmers and large-scale palm producing companies.
”Loans will be granted through our ABP and CACS programmes at no more than 9 percent per annum to identified core borrowers,” he said.
In his remarks, the Governor of Edo, Mr Godwin Obaseki, said the state was currently cultivating about 70,000 hectares of land of oil palm.
He also stressed the need to revive the moribund Nigerian Institute For Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) in Benin to improve investment in research and production of quality oil palm seeds.
“We should understand that for meaningful investment to come into the oil palm industry, we have to think of other incentives to encourage manufacturers to turn oil palm to other things.
“What I mean is that palm oil can be used to manufacture margarine, soaps, toothpaste and other things.
”We must also think about how to create incentives for those who are currently in the business to explore all the uses of palm oil to create job opportunities for our people,” he said.
In his speech, the Governor of Akwa Ibom, Mr. Udom Emmanuel, stressed the need to educate oil palm small holder farmers on the use of improved seedlings as a way to improve output.