The Federal government has assured investors in the sugar industry of adequate protection on their investments through effective implementation of the National Sugar Master Plan (NSMP).

The national sugar master plan was launched last September in Abuja following its approval by the Federal Executive Council. Its implementation began in January.

The Executive Secretary, National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) Dr Latif Busari, gave the assurance when he spoke at a public forum in Abuja on Sunday.

Busari said that the master plan had specified a number of incentives to investors, which the agency was poised to safeguard and deliver upon.

He said that government had put in place a new tariff structure that was consciously skewed against importation to promote local production as against the current high importation level in the industry.

Busari said there would be 10 per cent duty and up to 80 per cent levy on imported raw sugar while refined sugar would attract 20 per cent duty and up to 85 per cent levy.

“With the high tariff, we are discouraging importation. Even if somebody goes and import at that high tariff, it’s obvious that the sugar produced in Nigeria at a lower cost of production of the same quality, for instance, would of course be cheaper.

“That is a protection for the local industry. Then in terms of incentives, anybody who is going to invest in sugarcane to sugar project would have five years tax holiday during which he will not pay any tax at all to government.

“All the machinery that he is going to use, both on the field and in the factory, would attract zero duty. We are also encouraging that they source about 40 per cent of the sugarcane they mill in their factories from out-growers”.

Busari also said that to make things easy, government would also give sugarcane out-grower farmers, 50 per cent of whatever they needed to invest on their farms by way of seedlings and machinery.

He said any investor that invested in some infrastructure to be able to do his businesses would get 30 per cent tax credit.

He added that with the protection policy for investment and incentives to attract investors, Nigeria had created the environment conducive to investments in the sugar sector.

The NSDC executive secretary stressed that to further boost investors’ confidence in the new sugar regime adequate safeguards had been installed to insulate the master plan from policy sommersault.

He said the first guarantee for the sustenance of the master plan was that there is a government agency in place supervising and coordinating the implementation of the plan.

“We are also going to gazette the master plan which then makes it a little bit more difficult for anybody to come later and say…., then you can say this is gazette; this is government.

“Because a lot of other investors have made their plans; their financials and everything on what is on ground, for someone to just come tomorrow to say he wants to turn it over, it would be a little bit difficult.”