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Agriculture sector needs more incentives – LCCI

By BusinessNews Staff on July 31, 2014

The Federal Government needs to replicate the tax incentives it gave the steel industry in the agriculture sector, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said.

“It is important to look at more concessions for areas such as agriculture, which is very key because one thing that can cause real trouble in a nation is when there is no food and people cannot feed themselves,” the Chairman, Trade Promotion Board, LCCI, Dr. Michael Olawale-Cole, said.

Olawale-Cole, in an interview with our correspondent, said the Ministry for Agriculture was doing a fairly good job in the sector but that the government needed to do more to create jobs and curb the prevailing violence and insecurity in the country.

He said, “The incentives in the steel industry will help companies that deal with products or bye products of those things that are being imported such as car manufacturing.

“Agriculture should be given priority. If people cannot feed themselves, they lose hope and sometimes they go violent; agriculture needs lots of commitment from the government. It is an area the government must look at; they must bring to the barest level the duty paid by those people who are genuinely into exploiting our potential in agriculture.”

According to him, there should be a deliberate effort to explore other areas of revenue generation other than oil and gas.

“There are other potential outside oil and gas; we were comfortable before the discovery of oil and gas; we had the groundnut pyramids and we had cocoa. Those were good days for Nigeria. We should go back to our first love, agriculture, and develop it. We can also look at other areas that are new and open our eyes to such areas for development,” he said.

[Punch]

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