NIRSAL Facilitates N148bn Agric Financing, Investments
NIRSAL announced on Thursday that it had facilitated over N148bn in finance and investments for agriculture and agribusiness.Giving an account of the operations of NIRSAL in the last 13 months, Abdulhameed, disclosed that NIRSAL also aggregated over 3,000 agro geo-cooperatives with 500,000 farmers on nearly 800,000 hectares of land.
Punch reports, the Managing Director NIRSAL, Aliyu Abdulhameed, told journalists in Abuja that the firm achieved the feat as of the fourth quarter of 2020.
He said “We enrolled 1.4 million persons onto innovative insurance products designed by NIRSAL in collaboration with a consortium of agricultural insurance underwriters,”
Abdulhameed stated.
He said NIRSAL was 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.
This, according to Abdulhameed, would curb the dismal levels of post-harvest losses in Nigeria and create efficient routes for commodity movement and storage.
He said, “In the course of the last 13 months, we facilitated the flow of over N30bn into agricultural value chains from commercial banks and other sources.
“Even though our operations suffered a stall during the lockdown of 2020, our technological depth gave us a pathway to return to work while remaining safe and socially-distanced.”
He added, “As you know, it was important to continue, even increase, food and raw materials production as the pandemic bit harder.”
Abdulhameed said NIRSAL had grown its balance sheet to N140bn, equity by 1,415 per cent and our total assets by 87 per cent.
He said the number of farmers which the agency had worked with had also grown, especially as NIRSAL fully unveiled its agro geo-cooperative model in 2020.
Source: https://punchng.com/nirsal-facilitates-n148bn-agric-financing-investments/
