Managing Director of Premier Standard Industrial Limited, Mr Gbolahan Adenuga in this interview with peplnews, speaks on the challenges of fish farming in Nigeria, prospects and the expectations of fish farmers from the Federal Government. Excerpts:

Premier Standard which came into being in 1985, diversified its portfolio into the agricultural products and through its aggressive marketing today is the number one supplier of Coppens brands in Nigeria with offices in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja and Aba. How has the business been over the years?

It is true that this company was established over 20 years ago, but talking about 30 years of this business is beyond me because my father, Mr.Fatai Adenuga the Executive Chairman of this company actually came up with the idea. I was appointed Managing Director in 2012 and since I came on-board, I can tell you that we have had our own ups and downs.

Over the last five years, the business climate in Nigeria has been tough due to several reasons, but nevertheless I’ve enjoyed the experience.

How has the current situation of foreign exchange scarcity impacted on your business?

One of the major challenges we have been facing in this business in the past two years is forex. In 2015, through the aid of most of our commercial banks, we were able to access a significant chunk of our forex and at the official market rate, but now in 2016, it’s been very challenging, we have only gotten maybe only 10-15 per cent of our forex demands from the official market while the other percentage were sourced from the black market, which has added to the high costs of our imports.

This has significantly impacted on the import that we were doing when compared to what we were doing in 2015. Our volume has significantly dropped for 40 -50 % from what we did in 2015.

This could lead to low patronage for your product due to price increase, unfortunately it has gotten to the limit now where you can no longer increase price.

What is your say about companies that have closed shop in recent time due to the present economy?

I can tell you that the situation has not been palatable at all. However, if it continues, one will have to look at the several other options available.

Since it is expensive importing your products, is the company looking at local production to cushion the effect?

In the area of local production, we have been thinking about how we can produce the products locally, but the major challenge is that it will be practically impossible to source all your materials locally, you will still need a little bit of forex for some foreign components to make production possible.

As a professional in the industry, how much do you think this sub-sector would require to satisfy the yearning of consumers?

If we are to project and look at it critically, the industry will probably need nothing less than $500 million because this sector is big and requires a lot of financial inputs.

Numerous associations and companies are approaching the government for financial assistance this day, have you ever approached the government to come to your aid?

What we practically do in this industry is to provide feeds for fish farmers. There is an association of catfish farmers and several other associations in the sub-sector. I know they are very well regulated and structured. I’m sure they have approached the government for assistance in the past.

Parts of the challenges the industry is facing is that the importers of fish into the country, do not pay VAT, but unfortunately, people that supply the animal feeds and local feeds producers, are subjected to pay VAT by government agencies. So, there is a disconnect somewhere.

For a government that wants to support the agriculture industry, we would expect that local producers and importers of feeds would also be exempted from VAT. These are some of the areas we are looking at engaging the government as a body.

What we find out in recent time is that a lot of people are pulling out of the business and venturing into other businesses.

The government needs to convey a policy that will aid the entire industry by reviewing the entire value chain, what goes into fish farming production, challenges of fish farmers, regulation of fish price, ensuring that cost of running fish business is reduced because a lot is spent on power generation for the ponds. Also, government needs to help in subsidising the cost of feeds and so on.