By Kunle Akinsola
The Bank of Agriculture (BOA) says it has so given out N84 billion to farmers under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) out of the N100 billion received from the apex bank.
The Managing Director of BOA, Malam Kabir Adamu, disclosed this while receiving participants and officials of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos, in his office.
The Managing Consultant, Asipita Umar, led the team to BOA.
Adamu said the bank had also empowerment millions of farmers.
President Muhammadu Buhari had in 2015 launched the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme targeted at creating a linkage between anchor companies involved in the process of selecting key agricultural commodities and smallholder farmers.
The focus of ABP is to provide seed to farmers and cash to grow the crops. This will help to boost production of the selected commodities and make sure there is a constant supply of the commodities to the agro-processors.
The produce of farmers benefiting from ABP, after harvest, is supplied to the Agro-processor (Anchor) who pays the cash equivalent to your bank account.
“Through the ABP, the bank has impacted on over 500,000 farmers directly and indirectly, we are looking at 1.7 million farmers.
“The total hectares that we covered under the programme is about 470,000 hectares, money received from the CBN is over N100 billion, and we have disbursed over N84 billion,’’ Adamu said.
He added:“The most recent engagement that the bank is undertaking is the Anchor Borrowers Programme.
“The ABP is a product of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and BOA is a major financial institution that is used as a platform to reach the farmers.
“We have the expertise, we have network of input suppliers that are constantly in touch with the farmers.’’
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