CBN urges farmers to add value to farm produce

The Central Bank of Nigeria has tasked farmers in the country with striving towards adding value to their farm produce in order to prevent waste and to earn more on them.

The Assistant Director, Development and Finance Department of CBN, Mr. Babatunde Okulaja, gave this advice in Osogbo on Thursday at a training session organised by the apex bank.

Okulaja said one of the recent innovations of the CBN to restructure the nation’s economy was an initiative called Produce, Add Value and Export.

Okulaja stated that a fresh sum of N220bn had been released to beneficiaries under the CBN’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund adding that 60 per cent of the fund would provide financial services to women-driven enterprises.

According to him, some of the available schemes of the apex bank are: Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund; Agricultural Credit Support Scheme; Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme; Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending and Anchor Borrower’s Programme.