Nigeria's federal government has just taken a decision to protect the local sugar industry. It banned the import of refined sugar and its derivatives from the country's Free Trade Areas (FTZs) into Nigerian customs territory.

The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment has issued guidelines to the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) on the import of refined sugar from free zones. "We recently noticed that due to the recent location of a sugar refinery in a free trade zone, of refined sugar is imported into the Nigerian Customs Territory under the concession granted to free trade zone companies to export 100% of their exit to the Nigerian Customs Territory, and this is a real potential threat to the objectives of the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan (NSMP)," indicates a letter from the NPA to Lagos Port Complex.

Indeed, the NSMP provides a framework to incentivize investment in local refined sugar production by securing the Nigerian sugar market for investors under the Upstream Integration Program (BIP).