It’s cheaper to produce tomato paste in China and export it to Nigeria and other African markets than to produce it locally, according to Nigeria’s No. 1 tomato paste processor, Ventures Africa reported.

Tomato paste is used widely in Nigerian dishes from jollof rice to soups. Nigeria is simultaneously the world’s 13th largest tomato producer and the world’s largest importer of tomato paste, according to Harvard Business Review.

Eric Umeofia, CEO of Erisco Foods, said he plans to exit the Nigerian market and set up shop in Kenya, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Ethiopia, in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

The news came as a shock to Nigerians. Erisco has the largest tomato processing plant in Nigeria and the fourth largest in the world, The Guardian reported.

Umeofia said he chose Kenya, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Ethiopia because it’s easier to do business there than in Nigeria, where a government limit on access to foreign currency is hurting his business.

Nigeria has limited access to foreign currency for imports of 41 items including tomato paste. This has given unfair advantage to foreign tomato paste importers including Lebanese, Indian and Chinese, Umeofia said.

Just eight months after Umeofia’s Nigerian tomato paste opened in February 2016, Erisco announced it would close it and fire 1,500 workers.

The move is an embarrassment for President Muhammadu Buhari, who seeks to diversify the economy and add value to locally grown produce, Reuters reported.

Nigeria is among the top 14 tomato producers in the world, growing about 1.5 million tonnes of tomatoes a year, but has been forced to rely on tomato puree imports, mostly from China, because of a lack of processing plants, according to Daily Mail.

A May 2016 outbreak of tomato leaf miner moth, aka tuta absoluta or “tomato Ebola,” in northern Nigeria devastated the tomato crop, triggering a state of emergency and pushing up the price of a tomato 400 percent to about $0.71.

Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, was also affected by the crisis, African Business Magazine reported. His newly opened Dangote Tomato Processing Factory was forced to close temporarily until the next irrigation season, due to a lack of fresh tomatoes. The $20 million facility in Kano state is part of an effort to develop a Nigerian tomato paste industry and diversify the country’s economic base. You can read more at AFKInsider.

Six months later, the Dangote tomato paste factory has not begun operations. Cheap tomato paste imports from China are to blame, said Sani Dangote, vice president of the Dangote Group, Ventures Africa reported.

Chinese tomato paste imports are a cheaper option for Nigerians.

“Nigeria is such a huge market for tomato paste that we will find quite challenging to satisfy,” the factory’s general manager, Abdulkarim Kaita, told AFP in January.

Umeofia said recently he was moving his key manufacturing plant to China. He told NAN that his goal is to manufacture tomato paste in at least 20 African countries. Erisco Foods has had a dominant presence in Liberia and Angola.

In the past, the Nigerian government has helped support local manufacturers such as cement and some fruit producers, Umeofia said. He had hoped the government would support him by banning imports of tomato paste, according to a letter published in newspapers last week.

“(The central bank) refused to give us forex to import machineries, machine spare parts and raw materials to be used for processing of Nigerian fresh tomatoes into tomato paste in our Lagos factory,” he said. It also stopped the firm from using its own hard currency deposits of $460,000.

Nigeria produces about 1.7 million tonnes of tomato paste a year needs 2.4 million tonnes, requiring imports of about 700,000 tonnes annually, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Punch reported.

The country can produce about $100 million US worth of tomato paste annually, said Shehu Ahmed with the Agriculture Ministry at a meeting for stakeholders.

The demand gap has always been met through imports of about 80,000 tonnes of tomato concentrate and paste valued at $57 billion US.

Tomato paste imports have put pressure on the country’s foreign exchange earnings, Ahmed said.

Umeofia defended his actions in moving the operation out of Nigeria, The Guardian reported. He said he gave the Nigerian government warning of his intentions, along with a 30-day ultimatum to ban tomato paste imports. That didn’t work.

Umeofia also refuted government claims that Erisco and other tomato processing companies do not have the capacity to meet the country’s needs within five years. “Our state-of-the-art factory … has the capacity of making Nigeria attain self-sufficiency in tomato paste production by the end of 2016 and for export by 2017,” he said.