We facilitated N148bn agric funding in 8 yrs — NIRSAL MD

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has facilitated N148 billion financing to agricultural businesses since inception in 2013.

Mr. Aliyu Abdulhameed, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of NIRSAL Plc, disclosed this at an interactive session with journalists in Abuja.

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He said even during the COVID-pandemic, it facilitated up to N30bn in financing to agricultural value chains.

“In the course of the last 13 months, we facilitated the flow of over N30bn into the agricultural value chains from commercial banks and other sources,” he stated.

He said the investment was just on those the federal government slowed to move around to ensure food security even during the lockdown.

The MD further stated that NIRSAL achieved successes across its activities even as other countries now consult Nigeria to set up the same model of agriculture financing for them.

NIRSAL “facilitated over N148bn in finance and investments for agriculture and agribusiness. It aggregated over 3,000 agro geo-cooperatives with 500,000 farmers on nearly 800,000 hectares of land and enrolled 1.4 million persons onto innovative insurance products designed by NIRSAL in collaboration with a consortium of agricultural insurance underwriters,” he said.

He also said NIRSAL is working on platforms to significantly reduce post-harvest losses.

“We are engaging with and supporting the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment in the development of a policy on Secured Agricultural Commodity Transport and Storage Corridors (SATS-C),” he explained.

He also said the firm has grown its balance sheet to N140bn, our equity by 1,415 per cent and total assets by 87 per cent.

“The number of farmers we have worked with has also grown, especially as we fully unveiled our agro geo-cooperative model in the outgone year.”