The Bank of Agriculture has said it will within the next two years finance critical value chain in the agriculture sector with the sum of N25bn.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, BoA, Mr. Mohammed Santuraki, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja shortly after he led senior officials of the bank to a meeting with top executives of the Abuja Securities and Commodities Exchange.
He said the amount would contribute significantly to improving credit to small scale commercial farmers, who could not have easy access to finance owing to stringent bank conditions.
Santuraki said, “As you know in this country now, increasingly the efforts is towards value chain financing and you can’t have an effective value chain financing if you don’t have the critical value chain infrastructure.
“Agriculture is so vast in this country to the extent that no one institution can meet the funding demand in the sector. So, we are playing our part and the government has just indicated an intervention support of N15bn for agriculture production and we will use this over the next two years in a way that is sustainable and support both SMEs and agribusinesses. So, we now have a total of about N25bn over the next two years.”
He called on the National Assembly to ensure speedy passage of the Warehousing Financing Bill, adding that the bill, when signed into law, would help to change the face of agribusinesses in the country.