BOA Targets N250bn Minimum Capital Base To Boost Agriculture

Agric Minister

The Bank of Agriculture (BOA) has highlighted its desire to adequately finance agriculture in the country as it sets a minimum capital base target of N250 billion.


As reported by News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the Managing Director of the bank, Prof. DanBala Danju, revealed the target in Kaduna on Thursday after a meeting with Prof. Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer of PURDUE University in the United States.

Danju said the initiative was to enable all farmers’ access finance that would scale up production, processing, storage and marketing of produce, especially for the small- holder farmers, in order to generate more income.

To this effect, the meeting with Lowenberg-Deboer, who is also professor of agriculture and Director of International Programmes in agriculture, was set up. He said the bank would seek approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria to peg interest rate at five per cent to attract more farmers to its credit facilities. The collaboration is set to remodel its credit facilities in order to ease lending to Nigerian farmers.

According to him, the bank is consulting with different international experts in the sector to evolve a more realistic model of operation that would benefit millions of farmers across the country.

Lowenberg-Deboer, an expert in Agriculture Economics stated that the discovery of oil had distracted the country from focusing on the agriculture sector.

He said that the poor implementation of government policies in agriculture also played a major part in the slow growth of the sector.

According to Lowenberg-Deboer, who had worked for more than 30 years in different parts of West Africa, the country had the capital, personnel, good soil and adequate rainfall that would have made the country a major global player in the sector.

The expert, however, expressed regret at the country`s inadequate investment in research and education to enhance agricultural production.

“Nigerian Farmers will be efficient and profitable with the application of technology, input and information. Profitable input, supply marketing and processing business are keys to the future of Nigerian agriculture,” he said.