The Managing Director of the Nigeria Incentive Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), Mr Aliyu Hameed, has said the agency is planning to increase total value of agricultural lending – from the current 1.4% towards 10% of the total bank lending by 2026.

Hameed said the increment would be generating USD 3 billion of additional agricultural lending to boost food production levels, stimulate growth, create jobs and increase the standard of living of farmers.

The NIRSAL MD made the remarks in his presentation at the Design Workshop on Establishing an African Agriculture Risk Sharing and Financing Mechanism organized by the African Development bank (AfDB) in Nairobi, Kenya.

He said between 2013 and 2015, while still as a project implementation office under incubation within the Development Finance Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria, NIRSAL was able to guarantee loans totaling N61.160 billion to agriculture and paid out N753.35 million rebate to borrowers who repaid their loans on time.

 NIRSAL has also trained 157,000 farmers/primary producers in six agricultural value chains: rice, cocoa, cotton, tomato, sesame and soybeans.