Lagos seeks N14b agric boost

By Daniel Essiet

Lagos state Government is seeking N14 billion investments towards implementing its State’s five-year Agricultural Roadmap (2020-2025), to boost large-scale food production.

Speaking on Wednesday in Lagos at a Roundtable Discussion on the Implementation of the State’s 5-year Agricultural Roadmap (2020-2025),  the commissioner for Agriculture,Prince Gbolahan Lawal said the state needed investments in infrastructure to develop markets and boost its agricultural and fisheries capacities.

To attract enough investments to implement the roadmap, he said the government was working with Bank of Agriculture (BoA), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Bank of Industry (BoI) to drive institutional reforms.

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He said the government would create the incentives to attract more foreign direct investments, including donors’ support to improve the production capacity significantly.

He called for more private sector driven agricultural interventions and the provision of robust market information systems for value chain players.

He noted that the call became imperative in order to have adequate planning and circumvent risks and uncertainties in the sector.

“Using other economies which achieved economic growth using agriculture as a model, the lesson for the State is that there must be massive investment in infrastructure, encouraging more private sector driven agricultural interventions, formulating policies that can encourage private sector investment and provision of robust market information systems for Agricultural Value Chain actors in order to have adequate planning and circumvent risks and uncertainties,” the Commissioner noted.

He pointed out that the strategies to be employed this period would be hinged on three pillars including the growing the upstream sector through interventions by leveraging on technologies that are capable of lowering the cost of production of those value chains such as Fisheries, Poultry, Piggery, Rice, Vegetables and Coconut with support from donor agencies.