By Oluwafunke Ishola
Lagos – The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), has urged the Federal Government to as a matter of urgency address climate change and security challenges to boost agriculture.
Mr Muda Yusuf, the Director-General of LCCI made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos.
According to him, addressing the challenges will reduce the risk of food crisis in the country.
Yusuf was reacting to the high Inflation figure released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for September, which stood at 11.28 per cent from 11.23 per cent in August.
NAN reports that amid general increases in prices of goods and services, the latest rise was the second in two successive months after 18 consecutive months of decline.
Yusuf said that it was imperative to scale up productivity in agriculture, noting that food inflation rate at 13.31 per cent was high and had implications for poverty and welfare, especially for citizens at the grassroots.
He said that the key drivers of food inflation include security challenges faced by many farming communities across the country, climate change effect, productivity issues and paucity of commercial agriculture.
Yusuf noted that the recent flooding across the country may further compound the food security outlook in subsequent months.
He said that the present inflation outlook would predispose the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to retain its monetary tightening stance, adding that the business community would have to contend with a high interest rate regime in the months to come.
