The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, on Tuesday said that Nigeria would start processing its raw cashew nuts for export by 2019.
Ogbeh made this known at the maiden edition of the 2017 First Bank Agric Expo in Lagos.
The expo is tagged: Reinventing Agriculture for Sustainable National Development.
According to him, the current worth of a tonne of roasted or processed cashew nut for export is $10,000 while the raw cashew nut is sold for $1,200.
He said it would be better to process the nuts for export instead of exporting raw cashew nuts in order to benefit from the high cost of cashew nuts.
“So in the next two years we will no longer export raw cashew nuts, but roast the cashew nuts for export.
“If we produce a tonne of roasted cashew it will be sold at the international price of $10,000, whereas a tone of raw cashew nuts sells for $1,200,” he said.
Ogbeh also said that Nigeria shipped a total of $600,000 worth of raw cashew nuts to Vietnam alone in 2016.