The Managing Director of the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing system for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), Mr Aliyu Abdulhameed, has said the nation’s agricultural sector is yet to actualise its full potentials due to paucity of funds.
He disclosed this in Abuja at the first Annual NACCIMA-NIRSAL Agribusiness and Policy Linkage Conference themed: “Implementing the Agriculture Component of the Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP), held yesterday.
According to him, poor funding is a threat to government's Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) initially aimed to increase the agricultural annual growth from 2011-2015 output of 4.1 percent to 8.3 percent by December 2020.
Abdulhameed said NIRSAL was created by the government to share the risk in the agricultural sector but hopes that funds will be voted into the sector to give it a boost.
According to him, Nigeria has all the natural resources to boost agriculture, adding "but we lack the full capital to actualise these opportunities."
He noted that the aim of NIRSAL was to raise "commercial bank lending and other investments from 3 percent as it is today to about 10 percent by the year 2026; we want to see how we can mobilize up to six billion dollars annually into the Nigerian agribusiness sector.’’
Declaring the conference open, wife of the Vice President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo urged the private sector to collaborate with financial institutions to enable the sector get a boost and successfully achieve its aim in ensuring robust food production across the country.
"The president, Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) said that Nigeria's rice production has increased. He attributed this increase to the Federal Government's anchor borrower’s programme,” she added.
She said the success recorded in the sector so far was as a result of the collective effort put together by all the relevant stakeholders in the agricultural sector including the farmers.
She however called for a stronger collaboration among stakeholders to answer the call of Nigerians who are daily asking for means to feed themselves and get meaningful employment opportunities.
In her remark, Mrs Alaba Lawson, President, NACCIMA called on all stakeholders to tap into the sector because the market for agricultural services is very huge.
"We organised this conference which is aimed at maximising agricultural productivity by increasing public awareness of the potentials in agriculture. This is also to generate new commercial agricultural technologies that meet local market needs while advocating for improved data collection and evidence-based reporting and monitoring to evaluate the progress of agriculture promotion policy," she said.
By Maureen Onochie
Daily Trust News
