Folalumi Alaran
In view of the upcoming Feed Nigeria Summit (FNS) 2022, the Federation of Agricultural Commodities Association of Nigeria (FACAN) has announced preparations to meet with foreign investors, said the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has not measured up to expectations.
During the pre-summit symposium held in Abuja on Thursday the umbrella body for Nigeria’s agricultural commodities organizations, which serves as the country’s highest authority, claimed that the CBN’s ABP scheme which was activated in 2015 towards providing farmers with the critical funds and inputs has long since stopped assisting farmers in their endeavors.
FACAN claims the “Deal Room” program which is focused on engaging foreign business development partners will offer farmers a supportive setting to present their businesses and initiatives for effective funding and implementation.
The Technical Adviser to the Minister of Agriculture on Knowledge Management and Communication, Mr Richard-Mark Mbaram stated that the economy is at a backslide and that it is essential to bring SMSEs from the nine yards agricultural ecosystem so they can comprehend the international partnership procedure.
He said, “ We are meeting with farmers because of the Deal Room Programme and the service it provides. So that they can begin on board all their business cases SMSEs and large scale activities whether they are aggregators or storage providers or exporters.
“ If they have means for finance and business cases they know investors will be happy to bring resources to bear, they can make those business cases available for financing and the deal room process will have blended finance, equity finance and conventional finance all made available.
“ As you know the Feed Nigeria Summit is conveying under the spaces of AgroNigeria in partnership with the federal ministry of agriculture and rural development.” He said.
On his part the executive secretary FACAN, Peter Bakare opined that the government lacks the necessary motivation to engage in mass production in order to develop the agricultural sector.
He therefore called on the government to focus and come up with innovative approaches that will give a lasting solution to the agricultural crisis facing Nigeria.
He said, “ As America said, Nigeria is the Garden of Eden. We have everything and the government is not looking at appropriate actions to be taken to either increase our production so that we can export more or increase our production so that the food will be sufficient.
“ We want the government to be focused, we want them to have a meeting with the stakeholders, then we give them a roadmap of what they should do, that is if they are willing to do it.” He said
