NIRSAL Aims At N135bn Revenue For Farmers

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing for Agriculture Lending has unveiled plans to assist farmers generate gross revenue of N135bn this year through the Anchor Borrowers Programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The Managing Director, NIRSAL, Mr. Aliyu Abdulhameed, said this at a PULA Insurance workshop held in Abuja.

He spoke on the theme, ‘Accelerating growth of agriculture insurance in Nigeria – Lessons learnt and way forward’.

NIRSAL is a risk-sharing system created by the CBN with a mandate to enhance the flow of affordable finance and investments into fixed agricultural value chains.

Abdulhameed stated that based on the strategic plan for 2018, NIRSAL would support about 500,000 smallholder farmers to cultivate over 600,000 hectares, with target grain product equivalent of 1.5 million metric tonnes.

According to him, based on current valuation of N90,000 per tonne, this will result in a gross revenue of N135bn for the farmers.

Abdulhameed said NIRSAL would continue to increase the percentage of private sector funds in agriculture.

He stated, “We want to ensure that intervention funds currently being used to finance agriculture are safe and we propose that the CBN will consider the use of this product and future products to insure all its intervention funds in agriculture.”