Kebbi State Governor blasts Commercial banks on agric financing

Sen. Abubakar Atiku Bagudu

 The Governor of Kebbi state, Sen. Abubakar Atiku Bagudu has decried the attitude of the commercial banks towards financing of agricultural activities as ignorance to the reality of the sector on the part of the financial Institutions.

Speaking on the achievement of the All Progressive Congress (APC) Governors forum on agricultural activities in the last seven month in government at the 8t Bola Tinubu Colloquiums theme “Agriculture-Action and Work Revolution” Governor Bagudu said the commercial banks need to know the dynamics and benefits they stand to gain in financing this sector for the agricultural activities to grow at an accepted pace.

His Excellency argued that the system really need to critically looked into why commercial banks are reluctant to lending to this sector added a revelation from a farmers showed  about two hundred thousand Naira was only needed to finance a farmer doing about three crops of wheat, rice and other for a gain of N700,000.00.

Naira

 He saying “ We don’t think there can be a better opportunity for financing except  that something is wrong in the banking system, and maybe something is wrong with the banking culture which does not encourage lending to the agricultural sector, and we think that is what we needs to look into, that is where the quantum of money we need to put agriculture on its sustainable basis should come from”.

He lamented that many banks did not have desk for agriculture saying this speaks volume why many of them did not understand the financing of the sector thereby called on President Buhari to clamour for more investment into the sector. 

Finally last week in furtherance to achieve self-sufficiency, Lagos State and Kebbi state signed an agriculture value chain promoting agreement, because we realize that state can cooperate, with each other, we can increase trade and processing among each other and do more trade for ourselves, we can do more for West Africa and we have to do more, because in the ECOWAS sub-region we are members of an economic union to which we cannot shut our boarders, however all those countries in West Africa are import dependent , so if we fix our agriculture, not only do we stand to benefit but we can also provide for all of west Africa.