The Executive Director, Corporate and Investment Banking, Mainstreet Bank Limited, Mr Roger Woodbridge, has commended the Federal Government for coming up with the Growth Enhancement Scheme; which is designed specifically to provide affordable agricultural inputs like fertilisers and hybrid seeds to farmers in order to increase their yields per hectare and make it comparable to world standard.
A statement by the bank on Thursday quoted Woodbridge as saying, “The GES scheme has enabled the private sector to play an integral role in growing the nation’s food production.”
He added that the Public Private Partnership provided effective framework for private sector engagement in overall agricultural development.
On the role of Mainstreet Bank’s support for Nigeria’s agricultural sector, Woodbridge noted that the bank’s investment of nearly N10bn so far under the GES scheme had given the bank an opportunity to contribute towards the reduction of hunger amongst Nigerians.
He said that Mainstreet Bank offered a learning experience to other banks that were still sceptical about agricultural funding.
He said, “Nigerian banks must lend support to human centred development activities such as agriculture which has the ability to increase the production capacity of local farmers as well as aid to gainful employment for the youth population.”
Also commenting on the recent Millennium Development Goal’s report, where The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation honoured Nigeria and 37 other nations for reducing the number of people living in absolute hunger in their countries by half well ahead of the year 2015, he expressed excitement that concerted efforts in the implementation of the Federal Government’s agricultural transformation initiative would in the shortest possible time stimulate wealth creation along the agricultural value chain especially amongst the rural populace.
It would be recalled that in the recently released report, the progress of the affected countries was measured between 1990 to 1992 and 2010 to 2012, against benchmarks established by the international community at the UN General Assembly in 2000.