The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agriculture (NIRSAL) has introduced Project Monitoring Reporting and Remediation Office (PMRO) to support 225,000 farmers under the CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Scheme.
A statement from NIRSAL on Wednesday said the PMRO office will be located in each state and the Federal Capital Territory.
“The PMROs are designed to support NIRSAL’s core mandate of making agriculture more attractive for private sector investment by de-risking the agricultural value chain. Among other functions, they will provide rigorous monitoring and supervision of NIRSAL facilitated agriculture projects to improve successful outcomes” the statement reads in part.
NIRSAL which the Central Bank appointed an implementation partner in the Anchor Borrowers Programme, is deploying the PMROs to support an initial number of about 225,000 farmers throughout the country under the programme.
The 225,000 farmers being supported include a minimum of 5,000 farmers in 37 locations – 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
The Managing Director/CEO of NIRSAL, Mr. Aliyu Abbati Abdulhameed in the statement explained that the PMROs will play an important supportive role because NIRSAL runs a lean operation at its corporate HQs.
“The PMRO structure is very critical to our operations. Agriculture is a field business. They would act as our eyes to ensure that agricultural projects that we facilitate finance for are executed in line with agreed terms and also serve to extend the reach of our interventions,” Alhaji Abdulhameed said.
He added that the PMROs will also have the responsibility of capturing the impact of NIRSAL’s interventions on communities, individual farmers and other players along the agricultural value chain.
“The positive impact made is the justification for our existence so it’s critical to constantly measure and review the impact of our interventions.”
The function of the PMRO office in each state is to generate new projects where necessary, supervise existing ones and mobilize the community to support and own as well as enjoy the positive impact of NIRSAL projects.
As a Business Development unit, the PMROs will also work to make sure that there are sufficient projects in each state to be funded by NIRSAL.
Dr. Steven Ogidan, the National Coordinating Consultant overseeing the PMRO structure believes that “the closeness of the PMROs to project sites and the embedding of project monitoring services within the project sites of any project that is more than 500M ensures effective monitoring and reduces the risk of loan diversion”
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