Nigeria’s quest to rake in about $2 billion from cashew nut export this year is being threatened by poor infrastructure, price volatility and rejection, New Telegraph has learnt. Consequently, cashew farmers in the country’s agricultural space are not finding it easy in their quest to realise foreign exchange (forex) from export of the commodity following high cost. The current price has been put at N400,000 per tonne (locally) as against $1,000 per tonne at the international market. A former Chairman, Export Group of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) and also a member of the Governing Council of LCCI, Dr. Obiora Madu, in an interview with this newspaper, lamented that poor infrastructure in the country was contributing to the high cost of export, thereby discouraging cashew farmers. According to him, the bad conditions of the Apapa roads alone has led to astronomical rise in price of transporting cashew nuts to the port for export. Madu said: “Your own infrastructure has come to ground zero. As I speak with you, go and find out how much cashew is selling in Nigeria, over N400,000. At the international market, price is approximately $1,000. So, who are you going to sell to? So, what is responsible for this high cost is logistics and bad conditions of Apapa roads.” He said the rising cost of logistics for cashew nuts was another critical challenge facing the country’s agriculture sector. Consequently, this and other challenges are expected to mar government’s revenue projection targets for 2021. In fact, New Telegraph’s findings indicated that this would be the second time, after 2019, that there would be a lull in cashew export business However, to make matters worse, investigations by this newspaper showed that Vietnam and India have refused to take delivery of Nigeria’s cashew nuts because of the price volatility and inability of government to give out loans to processors this year, since they have not been able to offset the facilities for past years. With this situation, cashew farmers are expected to lose about N100 billion in export sales of the commodity this year alone based on their 220,000 metric tonnes of cashew nuts production for 2020 plantation season. Speaking on the pricing regime, the Deputy Executive Secretary, Federation of Agricultural Commodity Associations of Nigeria (FACAN), Peter Bakare, confirmed that Nigerian exporters had been losing about 37,000 tonnes of cashew meant for Vietnam market to price volatility since the beginning. He explained that the price volatility was due to lack of conducive business environment that had made the price of raw cashew from Nigeria to be higher than the price of finished product in the international markets. According to him, the price instability of the commodity has caused uncertainty in the cashew market, adding that over 67,000 tonnes of cashew were also still lying in the warehouse in Nigeria awaiting exports. The deputy scribe explained that the Vietnamese were reluctant to accept the Nigerian exporters’ price demand, saying that the price of the commodity was too expensive. On Nigeria’s cashew sector’s development, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) said that the country planned to increase her export earnings from the commodity produce from $800 million (2017) to $2 billion this year, following government’s plan to get more cashew nuts processing machines nationwide.