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Tag: NIRSAL

  • NIRSAL, insurance firms to support 16,954 farmers

    The Nigerian Incentive Based Risk Sharing Sys-tem for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) and insurance firms are partnering to support 16,954 smallholder farmers, NIRSAL’s  Managing Director, Aliyu Mohommed, has said.

    Mohommed, who stated this at a forum tagged: NIRSAL Accelerating Growth of Agriculture Insurance in Nigeria, said the scheme will take about N2.753billion. He stated that this will be the most advanced and innovative agriculture insurance product ever offered on a large scale on the African continent to date.

    He said:  “Having a group of insurance companies working together gives further comfort. Going forward, in the 2018 wet season, the Central Bank of Nigeria  (CBN’s), Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) and NIRSAL plan to support about 500,000 smallholder farmers cultivating over 600,000 hectares with target grain product equivalent of 1.5million  metric tons valued at N90,000 per ton, producing a gross revenue of N135billion and supporting over 2.5million people and families.”

  • NIRSAL okays $30m for agric insurance

    The Nigeria Incentive-Based   Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL)  has set aside $30 million to boost insurance products lending, its Managing Director Mr Aliyu Abdulhameed has said.

    The products include weather index insurance, and new variants of pest and disease insurance.

    Addressing Institute of Directors (IoD) Nigeria members in Lagos, Abdulhameed said NIRSAL was aiming for an ecosystem with a mandate to evolve crop insurance products and provide accurate risk assessment of crop yield by integrating climatic variables with geospatial and economic datasets.

    To aid its monitoring capacity, he said NIRSAL would deploy technologies that will enhance agri-data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide solutions to stabilise farm yields.

    With the technologies at its disposal, he said the farmers can use data-driven insights to improve the quality of their crops and better manage their land.

    He said NIRSAL was working towards changing the lives of farmers not just by predicting crop patterns and yield, but also by improving crop insurance, innovating agri-lending services, and creating a better link among banking agencies, insurance providers and farmers.

    He stressed the importance of the use technology to improve agricultural outcomes and to empower farmers.

    IoD President, Ahmed Rufai Mohammed, urged the government to take enough measures to revive  agricultural economy.

    According to him, what the sector needs is higher agricultural credit, and other incentives to  boost farmers’productivity.

  • NIRSAL guarantees $375m loans

    The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has guaranteed $375million loans given to farmers through various financial institutions to boost food production. These also included the financing of 447 tractors.

    Disclosing this while addressing members of Institute of Directors Nigeria (IoD) in Lagos, its Managing Director, Mr. Aliyu Abdulhameed, said 645 projects executed across the sector were guaranteed.

    During the first quarter of the year, Abdulhameed said NIRSAL mobilised over N35billion for financing of agribusinesses through strategic partnerships.

    NIRSAL, according to him, developed and launched the Area Yield Index Insurance product and protected up to N2.75billion expected revenues of 16,954 farmers.

    He said NIRSAL intends to mobilise a minimum of N60billion investments annually over the next three years to boost agricultural production nationwide.

    Another target, according to him, is to support the cultivation of at least 2,000,000 hectares of farmland and aid 3.8 million farmers.

    He said NIRSAL is deploying technology to build a credit-rating system for farmers as banks hesitate to lend to them because they are often uncertain about recovering their loans.

    Following the success of the scheme, the NIRSAL boss said the organisation is offering guidance on the establishment of Risk Sharing Facility (RSF) models for African Countries under the aegis of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

    IoD President/Chairman Of Council, Alhaji Ahmed Mohammed, noted that high income from oil export notwithstanding, agriculture still remains the largest sector in the Nigerian economy, accounting for 22per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and about 70 per cent of employment opportunities.

    According to him, small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) are involved in producing a large proportion of Nigeria’s food requirement and they engage a sizeable portion of the labour force. But their biggest constraint is limited access to finance.

     

  • NIRSAL moves to ensure food security

    The Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has entered into a partnership with the world’s largest crop chemical producer to ensure food security for Nigeria.

    Speaking at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NIRSAL and Syngenta Agrochemical Company in Abuja on yesterday, the Managing Director of NIRSAL, Mr. Aliyu A. Abdulhameed said Nigerian farmers need simple and reliable ways to maximise their yields.

    The thrust of the agreement, he noted is to take a holistic approach and create integrated, tailored made solutions, all combined with advanced crop protection science, quality seeds delivering higher yields, and agronomic advice based on deep insights into how small holder farmers work can increase farmers yield by between 40 and 80 per cent.

    He said the partnership between NIRSAL and Syngenta, is designed to ensure: basic business management; end to end agronomy; crop protocols; and safe and effective use of crop protection products.

    This partnership he said is not only focused on making quality inputs available, but will more importantly provide productivity enhancing technology and practices for smallholder farmers in Nigeria.

    This will include a wide range of support such as improving seed yields, teaching best farm practices, and providing effective capacity building to farmers and other stakeholders, to ensure optimal productivity.

    same technology and package of practice to enhance our primary production activities” he said.

    Farmers under the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme as well as other Primary Production activities will enjoy this yield enhancing technology through NIRSAL’s Project Monitoring, Reporting and Remediation Offices across the 36 states plus FCT.

    This will present the opportunity to reach over a million Smallholder Farmers leveraging on NIRSAL’s coverage and collaborations with critical stakeholders in the Agricultural Value Chain.

    To ensure sustainability and maximal adoption of these Technologies and Packages of Practice closer to the Smallholder farmers, NIRSAL will layer it on its A-PASS structure. “This starts with the Geo Cluster of 10,000Ha, to Agro Geo Cooperative of a maximum of 250Ha and the Geo Cooperative Cell which covers about 50Ha, and to the individual farmers “farm plot” Abdulhameed said.

  • Development Bank, NIRSAL sign MoU on agricultural financing

    The Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) Plc and the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) Plc have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at enhancing the flow of funding to the agricultural sector of the economy and its value chain.

    At the signing ceremony yesterday at the NIRSAL Headquarters in Abuja, DBN and NIRSAL committed to a strategic collaboration that will impact positively on agriculture and all the value chain players and thus help to address the concerns of financial institutions on the high risk of lending to the sector.

    Under the partnership, NIRSAL is expected to provide risk mitigating credit guarantees while DBN is expected to provide the funds for on lending to Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the agricultural sub-sector and its value chain.

    Managing Director, Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) Plc, Mr. Tony Okpanachi said the partnership with NIRSAL was in line with the mandate of the bank to alleviate financial constraints faced by MSMEs by providing financing and partial credit guarantees to eligible financial intermediaries on a market -conforming and on a sustainable basis.

    According to him, MSMEs have the potential to achieve key macro-economic objectives of the Federal Government which include job creation, poverty alleviation, financial inclusion and development of technology among others.

    In his remarks, Managing Director, Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) Plc Mr. Aliyu Abdulhameed said the partnership would help NIRSAL to achieve its primary mandate of facilitating the flow of credit, finance and investments into agriculture and agribusiness.

    ‘’NIRSAL believes strategic collaborations with major stakeholders in the industry is pivotal to achieving defined and well-tailored objectives and results. It is in line with this view, that the partnership with Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) is structured. As development finance institutions, NIRSAL and DBN share a common goal of supporting investments that will catalyse sustainable economic growth, create more jobs and equip farmers with the capital needed to thrive in the agricultural sector,’’ Abdulhameed said.

    While DBN was established by the Federal Government of Nigeria in collaboration with World Bank, African Development Bank and other renowned International Development Finance Institutions to address the major financial constraints faced by MSMEs in Nigeria, NIRSAL was set up by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to provide the much needed risk management tool to enhance the flow of finance and investment in the agricultural value chain.

  • NIRSAL promotes commercial agriculture

    The Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural lending (NIRSAL) has said it will finance farmers and agric-value chain operators to boost commercial agriculture.

    NIRSAL Managing Director, Abdulhameed Aliyu, disclosed this at a validation workshop on Agricultural Value Chain (AVC) operators, financing and capacity needs assessment held yesterday in Lagos. He expressed NIRSAL’s readiness to boost agriculture and ensure that all Nigerians embrace commercial farming.

    “The agricultural sector is central to Nigeria’s economy, accounting for 40 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and providing over 60 per cent of employment. However, the sector represents only one per cent of exports.

    “Over the last decade, agricultural growth has slowed down and is under-performing despite enormous potentials.

  • NIRSAL plans N1.8tr investment in agric

    The Nigeria Incentives Risk Based Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), is to mobilise investments of about $6 billion (N1.83 trillion) annually into the agricultural value-chain as well as other sectors of the economy.

    NIRSAL Managing Director, Aliyu Abdulhameed who spoke yesterday about the plan in Abuja at the first annual Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture   (NACCIMA) NIRSAL agribusiness and policy linkage conference. He said mobilising investment for agricultural value-chain has become imperative to assist  government achieve its objective of increasing annual agricultural growth output of 4.1 per cent to 8.3 per cent by December 2020 as contained in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

    He said: “We are naturally endowed with land, water, climate and the market and at very competitive levels, but we lack the full capital to actualise these opportunities. In order to leap-frog the development as desired by the agricultural sector, fully identified actors have to be attracted into Nigeria.”

    Abdulhameed said the role of NIRSAL is to facilitate and increase the flow of commercial revenue and investment in agriculture, and fix the broken value chains which are impediments in achieving increased financial investments.

    With this role identified, he said  the objective of NIRSAL “is to raise commercial bank lending and other investments from three percent as it is today to about ten per cent by the year 2026. We want to see how we can mobilise up to $6 billion annually into the Nigerian agric business sector.’’

    He lamented that “agricultural practices and methods are still very crude and the country lacks modern technologies and infrastructure for logistics, storage and processing. despite natural talents and large domestic market notwithstanding, bank lending to agriculture is less than five per cent of total lending at interest rates as high as 25 per cent.”

    Nigeria he said is lacking in four critical areas namely, technology, equipment, human/intellectual capacity and finance, based on this, NIRSAL is in partnership with NACCIMA to promote strategic approaches in solving endemic challenges that appear in the process of increasing agricultural financing.

  • NIRSAL targets N1tr annually

    The Federal Government is looking to agriculture to add N1trillion to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually by guaranteeing the risks associated with mechanized agriculture.

    To make this a reality, the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing system for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), has offered to commit 75 percent of its balance sheet to guarantee mechanization of agricultural value chain in Nigeria.

    NIRSAL would be implementing the project in partnership with the Machine and Equipment Consortium Africa (MECA) and National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI).

    The Managing Director of NIRSAL, Aliyu Abdulhameed, made this known in Abuja yesterday at the stakeholders concept validation forum and press launch of NIRSAL-MECA agricultural mechanization management contract service for subnational governments.

    Under the new scheme, NIRSAL is providing 75 percent guarantee to the total amount required to service 10,000 tractors annually for the next 10 years in the country.

    Abdulhameed predicted that the project, if well implemented, could enable agriculture add up to N1 trillion to the nation’s GDP annually.

    He said: “An average price of around N12 million per tractor, plus basic equipment, will be equivalent to about N120 billion worth of equipment that is needed to be serviced.

    “An average yield of four tonnes per hectares of grain will result in about 1.2 million metric tonnes of grain, while an average price of 100,000 per metric tonnes of grain, will result in over N1 trillion worth equivalent that we will add to this economy,” Abdulhameed said.

    The NIRSAL boss said the project was borne out of NIRSAL’s concern that there are just approximately 6.5 tractors for every 100 square kilometers of arable land in Nigeria, as against the global average of 200 tractors for every 100 square kilometers. Most of the tractors which have gone bad are not being repaired despite the country’s need for mechanized farming.

    He said Nigeria needs a minimum of 10,000 tractors each year for the next 10 years for any visible impact to be made in primary production in agriculture.

    “If Nigeria requires 10,000 tractors every  year for the next 10 years inorder to meet the global average of 200 tractors for every 100 square kilometers, it means that each of those tractors, doing an average of three hectares per day for 120 days, we will end up doing 3.6 million hectares.

    “Financing will be catalyzed through commercial banks, insurance companies will insure the project, while execution will be done by MECA and the service centres will be provided by NASENI.

    He said: “The practice of allowing the tractors to go into a state of disrepair six to 12 months after purchase, does grave harm to the government’s effort to develop agriculture.”

    Under the scheme, “every tractor that requires repair will be financed to the tune of N1. 5 million following outcomes of research in this regard. NIRSAL is encouraged that this project will deliver on its objective because of the records set by MECA as a global platform for the full utilisation of equipment that are underutilized or redundant.”

    He explained that the states and local governments have these assets that are scattered all over the country and that they will not be required to commit funding into the framework.

    “But the main beneficiaries are the owners of these assets, mainly the states and local governments. It is a project that will interest the banks, equipment manufacturers and generate the kind of return that convince the banks and insurance companies to commit to this programe,”

    Abdulhameed said NIRSAL will not put its money, but will provide guarantees for commercial banks to release their own money. By putting up to 75 percent guarantee behind the project means that NIRSAL will absorb all the risks that will likely arise from this project.”

    Also speaking at the event, Iliya B Gashinbaki, Country Director/ Chief Executive officer of MECA said his organization as the core anchor of the project together has selected three major brands, including Mahindra who will provide spare parts, working with a pool of professionals from NASENI to provide technical support and also certify that the tractors are okay.

  • FADAMA partners NIRSAL to boost farmers’ productivity

    FADAMA partners NIRSAL to boost farmers’ productivity

    The FADAMA III Additional Financing (AF) programme says it is collaborating with Nigeria Incentive Risk Sharing Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), an initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to increase the farmers’ income.

    The FADAMA National Coordinator, Mr Tayo Adewumi, said this in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) yesterday in Abuja.

    Adewumi said that NIRSAL assessed FADAMA activities and became convinced that the programme had a structure that would facilitate the fulfilment of its mandate as to improving the production and income of farmers.

    “We will continue to pass the message across to different states and see how we will continue to work together.

    “African Development Bank (AfDB) is already knocking on our door and we are waiting for them; our door is open at any point in time for any organisation that is ready to improve on what we have done for our farmers to make them remain in business.

    “Whenever such organisations come to us for interaction, we will show them what we have done before and let them know that both the off-takers and agro-dealers have never disappointed us,’’ he said.

    Adewumi said that the Federated FADAMA Community Association (FFCA) was established to facilitate the farmers’ efforts to sustain their gains from the FADAMA project and be able to stand on their own thereafter.

    “The associations are always on ground in some states and there is another sustainability plan we are putting in place.

    “This involves the private sector agencies that are supporting us to drive the process and they are representatives of different economic interest groups that form the FFCA.

    “Some states are doing well in terms of agricultural mechanisation and for those states that are just coming up under our Agriculture Equipment Hiring Enterprise (AEHE), they need to work harder to be independent,’’ he said.

    The national coordinator stressed that states that were still planning to sign up for AEHE should be aware that agricultural mechanisation was very essential.

    He said that the number of tractors acquired for AEHE might be small but the scheme was a form of intervention which, if well-managed, would have a lasting impact on agricultural production.

    However, Adewumi advised farmers to always monitor their harvests, saying that they ought to prepare and document reports on their specific harvests.