NIRSAL Says Role In AgroGeoCoop Is To Secure Bank Loans For Farmers

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has said that its role in the Agro Geo- Cooperatives is centered around helping farmers in the country secure loans from banks and guaranteeing such loans.

The institution had in the early hours of Wednesday announced plans to create a 16 thousand Agro geo- cooperatives on 4 million hectares of farmland and enrolling 8 million farmers across Nigeria.

Head Corporate Communications, NIRSAL, Anne Ihugba, told THE WHISTLER that the opportunity would ease the difficulty farmers experience when looking for small loans from Deposit Money Banks (DMBs).

“Typically, when farmers got to the bank and they ask for loans, they are unable to get the loans because their farms or their projects are too small for any bank to finance,” she told the website.

“What NIRSAL is trying to do is to gather farmers to get a cluster of may be 250 farmers or 250 hectares of land,” adding that such would give “a ticket of about 67 million, so when a bank, like Access gives the N67 million worth of loan.

“They are more interested in such amounts than one person coming with loan request of N100,000.”

She said that once NIRSAL aggregates those farmers, they would help them survey the land so that they know their farms and their products.

“We will also link them to the market, either a flour mill or other facilities, help them secure a loan from the bank and guarantee the loans,” she explained.

Meanwhile, Ihugba reiterated that NIRSAL’s job is basically to aggregate the farmers, get them the loan and then guarantee the loans.
He stressed that the institution does not issue loans.