With N148b facilitated by NIRSAL, over 500,000 farmers cultivating 800,000 hectares of land

Nigerian farmers who have benefitted from the Nigeria Incentives Base Risk Sharing System For Agricultural Lending have been growing by the day, with over 500,000 of them cultivating in excess of 800,000 hectares of land.

The Managing Director of NIRSAL, Aliyu Abdulhameed, disclosed this in Lagos on Thursday in a chat with some select online news media.

The farmers, who have been grouped into 3,000 agro geo-cooperatives, have so far benefitted from the over N148 billion facilitated by NIRSAL.

Abdulhameed said the firm, operating under the Central Bank of Nigeria, also enrolled 1.4 million persons into innovative insurance products designed in collaboration with a consortium of agricultural insurance underwriters.

Specifically on the achievements of the organisation in recent time, he said: “In the course of the last 13 months, we facilitated the flow of over N30 billion 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.

“As you know, it was important to continue, even increase, food and raw materials production as the pandemic bit harder.

“As enablers of actors in the agricultural value chain, we remained operational for those who were allowed by the Federal Government to move around for the purpose of producing food and rendering essential services in the society.”

Speaking on what NIRSAL had been able to achieve since inception, Abdulhameed said: “By remaining operational, our numbers grew: As at Q4 2020, we had achieved the following:

“Facilitated over NGN148billion in finance and investments for agriculture and agribusiness.

“ Aggregated over 3,000 agro geo-cooperatives with 500,000 farmers on nearly 800,000 hectares of land.

“Enrolled 1.4 million persons onto innovative insurance products designed by NIRSAL in collaboration with a consortium of agricultural insurance underwriters.

“We have also been up to some high-level advocacy.

“To curb the dismal levels of post-harvest losses that Nigeria suffers, and create efficient routes for commodity movement and storage, 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).

“ While pursuing our mandate that translates to positively impacting Nigeria’s economy, we have been building a world class corporate entity too.

“In the past year, we further improved NIRSAL’s structure and systems, maintained compliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards and successfully implemented the Balanced Scorecard performance management approach to tap the best from our talented employees.

“Along the line, we have grown our balance sheet to N140 billion, our equity by 1,415 per cent and our 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.”