The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has projected that export earnings from the agricultural sector will hit $4.4 billion by the end of the year.
This is even as it puts its total disbursements, which is specifically provided to export crop farmers to help boost their productivity and improve Nigeria’s non-oil export earnings, in the agricultural sector in the past year at $373 million, projecting that
The Managing Director, NIRSAL, Aliyu Abdulhameed, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the beneficiaries of the credit are small-holder farmers growing oil palm, cassava, cotton, rice, and corn, amongst other food crops.
He said: “The credit beneficiaries are mainly small-holder farmers growing cotton, rice, oil palm, cassava and corn. At average yield of four tons per hectare, these optimized small-holder farmers’ production would generate a gross output of about 16 million tons.
“Revenue from the exports is expected to reach 1.6 trillion naira ($4.4 billion) by the end of this year”, Abdulhameed projected.
He explained further that since the establishment of NIRSAL in 2012, it had been working with banks to guarantee up to 75 percent of credits provided for farmers and other agents in the agriculture value-chain.
The NIRSAL boss pointed out that at an average yield of four tonnes per hectare, optimised small-holder farmers’ production would generate a gross output of about 16 million tonnes for exports or processing locally.
