The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, said yesterday that a whopping N27.50 billion has been syndicated to banks for the supply of fertiliser for 2012 farming season.
Disclosing this to newsmen in Abuja, the minister said that the fertiliser supply would be made through agro-dealer network at single digit interest rate of 7.0 per cent.
His words: “Farmers would be provided an electronic wallet platform, two trials on the e-wallet platform have been carried out in four States namely, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Taraba and Kogi.
In the trial 100 farmers were targeted in each site in each State and the second trial was held in eight States, namely, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Bauchi, Niger, Ogun, Ebonyi, Anambra, Ekiti and the FCT.
A total of 3.5 million completed forms have been received at the data centre out of this about 3.0 million have been captured in the databank.”
Speaking further, Adesina added that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed for financing the supply of seeds to farmers between the Ministry of Finance and commercial banks for a guarantee of 70 per cent of loan principal payment and 8.0 per cent interest drawback.
While acknowledging that so far N1.5 billion has been released to the seed companies out of the N2.3 billion agreed for release, Adesina revealed that government was promoting the substitution by 40 per cent of high quality cassava flour as composite flour for baking bread and other confectioneries.
To this end, he said that government has been negotiating with China EXIM Bank for a facility to procure 18 mills to increase processing capacity of high quality cassava flour in the country.
According to him, currently we have identified 7,527,000 bundles of planting materials of improved varieties for 2012 season, enough to plant 125,020 ha and 430ha of demonstration trials and we would also establish this year 26,785 ha of foundation seed.