NIRSAL Plc Facilitates N146.22bn Credit to Agric Sector.
The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending(NIRSAL) has facilitated business deals worth N146.22bn as at the end of 2021.
Speaking at an interactive session with Finance journalists Tuesday in Abuja, the Managing Director of NIRSAL Plc, Mr Aliyu Abdulhameed said his organisation is galvanizing organic economic interest in Nigeria’s agriculture sector; to build conditions that enable borrowers and lenders engage in the creation of new value across the sector.
He said NIRSAL measures its milestones in terms of volumes of finance facilitated, which runs into billions of naira, adding that some people get the impression that we are lenders.
“When we say that NIRSAL Plc has facilitated the flow of over N146billion into agricultural commodity value chains from commercial banks, we mean that we have brokered deals whose value add up to that figure”, he said.
He noted that banks are very conservative with depositors’ funds, hence have long shied away from lending to agriculture because of their high perception of risks.
He explained that the development has necessitated the need for NIRSAL Plc to create conditions that influence a change in perception under a purely commercial logic referred to as fixing value chains.
Mr Abdulhameed further said that when banks lend, projects succeed, and borrowers pay back, our job is done, stating “We at NIRSAL Plc wake up every morning and go to work for the sole purpose of triggering and sustaining this flow”.
The NIRSAL boss posited that the organisation’s innovations in this regard have been well publicized, chiefly, the Agro Geo-Cooperative® farming model, which gives primary production a new impetus for attracting finance and investment.
Speaking on NIRSAL mandate, he said that it has birthed the F-AGC Agribusiness Solution Services, a suite of fee-based, largely technological expertise that we are set to offer willing buyers in the upstream segment of the agricultural value chain.
According to him, the innovation will provide traceability of funds to financiers and lead to efficiency in the farms.
“In all, financiers, which are largely the banks, remain the first critical market we are labouring to serve. At the other end are farmers and other agripreneurs to whom we are offering our innovations as platforms on which financiers are already standing, ready to do business”, he said.
