The Nigeria Customs Service has confirmed four companies that have been offered CBN emergency approval to import 262,000 tons of maize into Nigeria.
This was disclosed in an internal memo of the Nigeria Customs Service.
The companies are Wacot Limited, Chi farms Limited, Crown Flour Mills Limited and Premier Feeds Company Limited
The memo states: “in line with the government’s policy on food security, sufficiency and striking a balance between food imports and local production capacities to meet anticipated shortfall, the Central Bank of Nigeria has granted approval for the underlisted companies to import maize in the quantities stated below”.
The memo also notes the banks to conduct the transactions with the company names and the quantity each is approved to import.
Wacot Limited, approved to import 60,000 tons , conducting half of the approved capacity with Citi Bank and Titan Trust Bank respectively.
Chi Farms Limited will import 60,000 tons of maize banking with Titan Trust Limited.
Crown Flour Mills, with the lowest capacity approval, will import 22,000 tons via Coronation Bank.
Premier Feeds Company Limited got the highest capacity approval at 120,000 tons and will bank with Zenith Bank for the transaction.
The Nigeria Customs Service warned that only the above 4 companies are allowed to import maize into the country and the exercise would run strictly from August to October.
On Thursday, President Muhammadu Buhari had announced the Federal government’s plan to release 30,000 tons of maize from the national reserves to animal feed producers to deal with the high cost of poultry production after the ban on maize imports.
On July 14, the CBN had announced a ban on maize importation in a bid to boost local production.