As food crisis continues to stare Nigerians in the face, the Central of Nigeria (CBN) says it has so far granted N948 billion to 4,478,381 smallholder farmers in the country to boost food production, apart from supporting farming and creating 12.5 million direct and indirect jobs for Nigerian youths. Its Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, gave this hint while delivering the 25th and 26th combined convocation lecture of the Ekiti State University (EKSU)recently in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State.
According to him “the non-oil sector, particularly agricultural and manufacturing sectors, which contribute about 30 and 13 per cent to our GDP have been confronted with low investments, inadequate credit and weak infrastructure,” he was quoted as saying.
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But putting facts behind the figure, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) states that the nation’s Agriculture sector, although grew by 3.58 per cent (year-on-year) in the 4th quarter of 2021, an increase of 2.36 per cent from the preceding quarter (which recorded a growth rate of 1.22 per cent ) and contributed 26.84 per cent to overall GDP in real terms in Q4 2021, but that the Q4 growth rate was lower than that of the fourth quarter of 2020 and third quarter of 2021 which stood at 26.95 per cent and 29.94 per cent respectively.
On the food shortage and its attendant exorbitant price, the Bureau explains that the rising food costs, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is a major factor fueling inflation in Nigeria, and other sub-Saharan African nations, and might exacerbate present economic downturns in the country.CBN has, howei, lamented that transportation cost is the major cause of the surge in food inflation in Nigeria while the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) beleives that “access to formal credit is critical to farmers for purchasing inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, plant protection materials or animal feed. But In the absence of personal savings, borrowing from informal sources (such as money lenders, relatives and friends) may involve unduly high interest rates and unfavourable conditions, which may make many agricultural operations uneconomical. “The lack of access to credit is particularly problematic for farmers as there is a gap between the time that money is spent on cultivating crops or raising livestock, and the time money is made from the sale of the products. Credit to agriculture measures the amount of loans and advances given by the banking sector to farmers or to rural households, to agricultural cooperatives or to any agri-related businesses.”
The CBN Economic Report (CER) for the third quarter of 2021 states that “credit utilisation by sectors of the economy grew by 4.1 per cent to N22,802.10 billion at the end-September 2021, owing, largely, to increased credit to trade/general commerce. A breakdown of the credit showed that the agricultural sector’s share increased marginally to 5.4 per cent compared with 5.3 per cent at the end-June 2021.”
Source: By Omodele Adigun(Sun News)
