Ministry to help cooperatives access N220bn CBN fund

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbe has said his ministry will help Co-operatives to access the 220 million CBN MSMEs funds.
The Minister stated this at the National Cooperative Financing Agency Of Nigeria (CFAN) summit and AGM held in Abuja yesterday.
The Minister who was represented by the Director of Agribusiness Alhaji Azeez Muyiwa said 60% of the fund is dedicated to women and the loans can be gotten at 10 percent interest rate.
“You must know that the CBN working with Rural Finance Institution Building Programme (RUFIN) has the MSME fund of 220 billion naira out of which 60% is dedicated to women. So the minister has assured that he will support co-operators to access this funds, so that they can use it for production, processing and marketing and thereby increase our agricultural exports and agricultural production,”Muyiwa said.
The President of CFAN, Adebola Orulugbagbe said cooperatives were already accessing the funds  but the rate to which they are accessing it is very slow. “We intend to broaden that and get more people to access the intervention funds across the federation,” he said.
He added that they were over 10 million co-operators in Nigeria.
“We want to ensure that over the next 10 years, co-operators  contribute nothing less than 40  % to the total GDP,” Orulugbagbe said
The Executive Secretary CFAN, Mr Emmanuel Atama said Cooperatives have created the culture of savings in Nigeria and is helping SMEs to build their capacities to help them deliver in all their business endeavours.