NIRSAL powers agric sector with fresh N60bn

Abdulhameed Aliyu, MD/CEO NIRSAL
 As part of the effort to make agribusiness more attractive to the youth population and increase access to credit by farmers, the Nigerian Incentive Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has said it will release a whopping sum of N60 billion in fresh lending for agricultural purposes in the current financial year.

Delivering a paper entitled “Powering Nigerian Agriculture Through Innovative Financing: The NIRSAL Edge” at the BusinessDay Agribusiness & Food Security Summit 2017 last week, Aliyu Abbati Abdulhameed, Managing Director of NIRSAL, said the agency is working to reduce the break-even interest rate to agribusiness borrowers from 22 per cent to between 7.5 per cent and 10.5 per cent before the end of the year.

He assured Nigerian farmers that NIRSAL is well equipped to deliver on its mission to play a greater role in the effort to revamp the country’s agriculture sector by resolving the longstanding problem of inadequate financing of the agricultural sector. He said, “It is heart-warming indeed that the Federal Government is going beyond the much talked about potential of agriculture to actually demonstrating, through practical policies and initiatives that it is committed to transforming agriculture for the good and progress of the country.”


Abdulhameed NIRSAL disclosed that NIRSAL facilitated bank finance worth N695 million ($3.5 million) for the purchase of 227 tractors to Tractor Owners and Hiring Facilities Association of Nigeria (TOHFAN), and Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation, to ensure access to tractors at low prices. Also, within this period, NIRSAL boosted capacity of commercial banks by providing technical training for 187 bank desk officers, 185,000 farmers and 205 extension workers across the country.

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