From Uche Usim, Abuja
The Federal Government may have begun reaping the fruits of the restructured Presidential Fertiliser Initiative being handled by The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA). In four years of its operations, NSIA has transformed much of the operations to fertiliser blenders, just as it has saved the country over $350 million in foreign exchange payout. NSIA in a statement said the programme delivered over 30 million bags of NPK 20:10:10 equivalent spanning project period, engendered a price reduction on fertiliser from over N10,000 to under N5,500, resuscitated 41 blending plants from an initial number of four plants at project inception and created an estimated 250,000 direct and indirect jobs across the agriculture value chain including in logistics, ports, bagging, rail, industrial warehousing, and haulage touchpoints amongst others.
The role of NSIA under PFI transitions to an upstream player thereby limiting its involvement to importation, storage and the wholesale of raw materials to blenders. The NSIA subsidiary NAIC-NPK Limited will be spun off to the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MoFI).
Blenders will no longer be paid blending fees by NAIC-NPK, they will recover their costs directly from selling the fertiliser to the market. This will balance the incentives of the business and ensure the blenders build the right capacity to actively participate in the local supply sub-sector.