The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has frozen the accounts of 15 textile smugglers across the country.
Deputy Governor, Corporate Services of the CBN, Edward Adamu, made this disclosure at a stakeholders meeting of Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) associations in Abuja on Thursday.
Adamu noted that CBN’s intervention in the Cotton, Textile and Garments (CTG) industry is in full swing and has recorded significant progress.
Some of the achievements, he said, include: over ₦120 billion invested across CTG value chain; over 320,000 farmers financed between 2018-2020 and expected output for seed cotton in 2020 is projected to be over 300,000 metric tons.
All these, he said, is expected to enhance the production capacity of the ginneries in producing over 102,000 metric tons of cotton lint which in turn will meet and surpass the cotton lint requirement of the Textile Industries.
He said Nigeria’s domestic demand for cotton is met through local production, thereby halting importation of cotton for the textile industry.
He said this has also led to increase in capacity utilization of ginneries as the ginneries now operate throughout the year, compared to six months that it used to be.
He said 19 ginneries have been resuscitated across the country; and more are expected to join this year.
Speaking to journalists at the meeting, Director Development Finance of the CBN, Philip Yusuf Yila, said the apex bank was working with the textiles industry through the Bank of Industry (BOI) to see how we can retool them and take the ginneries to the textile.
“This year we are looking at over 300,000 tonnes of seed cotton that will be ginned into lint that will be taken to the textile companies and then we will work with the uniformed services to off take them,” he added.