RECESSION: Nigeria's largest tomato producer threatens shutdown

Nigeria’s biggest toma­to paste manufacturing company, Erisco Foods Limited, has said it will shut down operations within 30 days if the Federal Government failed to ad­dress salient issues that are frus­trating the country’s manufacturers.
The company, which has in­vestments worth over $150 mil­lion and a workforce of over 2,000, said it has been producing below 20 percent of its installed capacity since its inception because of the failure of some government agen­cies such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Ministry of In­dustry, Trade and Investment and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to live up to their re­sponsibilities.

The President/Chief Exec­utive Officer of Erisco Foods, Chief Eric Umeofia, in a letter he addressed to the chairman of the Federal Government’s Economic Team, Vice President Yemi Osi­nbajo, said it is surprising that at a time when the country is grap­pling with recession and trying to discourage importation and encouraging local manufacture, key government agencies are do­ing everything possible to frus­trate local manufacturers.
According to him, the CBN has refused Erisco access to for­eign exchange to enable it import machinery parts and raw mate­rials for the production of toma­to paste.
He said the same CBN ap­proved intervention loan and fo­rex to companies mostly owned by foreigners to import the same finished tomato paste and other items like frozen fish, fish heads and supermarket items that “we don’t need at all or that we can produce better in Nigeria.