FG Announces Plan To Ship $7bn Worth Of Cashew Nuts To US
Lekan Paul
Posted On Jun 29, 2017
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbe, has disclosed federal government’s plan to to roast and ship about seven billion dollars worth of cashew nuts.
Ogbe, stated this while briefing State House Correspondents on the outcome of Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting.
According to him, the government has been negotiating with Walmart, the biggest supermarket chain in the United States, to see this play out.
“They came here and asked us to roast cashew nuts for them; their demand is a 130,000 tonnes of cashew nuts per annum, the total value is seven billion dollars,” Ogbe said.
He said Nigeria, at present, ships raw cashew to Vietnam, where it is roasted and shipped to the US.
According to Ogbe, Nigeria would build six cashew processing factories to be sited in Enugu, Imo, Benue, Kogi, Kwara and Oyo states, which are “the cashew belts for now.”
He said these developments were coming because of Nigeria’s focus on non-oil export.
