The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, on Tuesday disclosed that the country saved $21 billion on food imports in the last three and half years.
Ogbeh, who gave this hint when he hosted officials of the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) and Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) during a meeting in Abuja, also said that the nation’s agricultural produce export increased by 500 percent within the period.
One of the key issues discussed at the meeting by the top government functionaries was the planned re-capitalisation of the BOA with a view to making it more operationally efficient in its funding intervention in the agricultural sector.
The minister explained: “Two banks in Nigeria announced that we have actually saved $21bn on food imports in three and half years, and the National Bureau of Statistics has affirmed that agriculture exportation has gone up to 500 per cent since we came in, and we are just beginning.
“This is important so that young people can be comfortable in their rural environments, make money and live a good life. We want to minimise the tendency of our young people crossing the desert to Europe in search of happiness which does not exist there”, he added.
Ogbeh pointed out that there was the increasing need for the country to increase its value addition in cottage industries as a strategic option of promoting industrial development at the grassroots and minimizing rural-urban migration nationwide.
According to him, the plan to recapitalise the BOA is one of the steps being taken by the Federal Government to increase its capital base and by so doing, enabling it provide loans to farmers at very low interest rates.
The minister expatiated: “We have a new vision for agriculture here; we want to create the farmers’ bank. This is their chance to become co-members and owners of the bank. It has a chance of becoming a very large bank in the future, just like the one in China.
“Failures in agriculture have been caused by a number of factors, sometimes the excessive interest rate and sometimes agronomic practices which are not in place or properly aligned, then, of course, there is the issue of management.”
“The Ministry of Agriculture is also going to make sure that it gives support to the bank so that failures are minimised.
“If this structure we want to put in place now starts working successfully, and we raise a capital base of anything between N200bn to N250bn and farmers can access credit at the lower end of the single digit (lower than six or five per cent), we hope to achieve a lot of things”, Ogbeh projected.
