Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State has set a target of over N100 billion for livestock production and processing.
The move, he said, would boost the economy, scale up the capacity of farmers in animal husbandry, and strengthen value chain across the spectrum of agricultural sector.
The governor stated this when he received a delegation from the Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support Project (L-PRES) led by the national project coordinator, Sanusi Abubakar, in Enugu for the flag-off of the first Regional Enugu Model Veterinary Hospital yesterday.
He expressed excitement that the veterinary hospital came at a time the state was focused on scaling up meat and dairy production to serve Enugu and beyond.
Mbah said the recent Enugu State Ranch Management Agency Law was conceived to unlock economic opportunities, create employment opportunities in the livestock space and contribute to the growth of the Gross Domestic Product from $4.4 billion to $30 billion.
He said, “We saw that we needed to start putting in a robust policy or a legal framework that can support these policies. We are aware that Enugu has a market size of over N100 billion, and we are quite ambitious in the growth projection of our GDP.”
While underscoring all the frameworks that the administration had put in place to unlock the economic potential in the sector, the governor said Enugu has capacity to produce enough “meat and dairy products for export, which would require skills in processing and packaging.”
He called on investors to seize the opportunities in the new ranch law, the veterinary hospital and the robust partnership between the state and the L-PRES to invest in the state, assuring sustained security of lives, property and investments.
Earlier, Abubakar, informed the governor that they visited to inspect the site and flag off the construction of the hospital.
According to him, the hospital, on completion, would, among others, carry out disease surveillance, maintain a healthy animal husbandry, conduct disease eradication services as well as vaccination of animals.
