BOI To Invest Additional N10b In Agriculture

[caption id="attachment_14710" align="alignnone" width="640"]Waheed Olagunju, BOI Acting Managing Director[/caption]

The acting Managing Director of Bank of Industry, BOI, Waheed Olagunju, has said that the Bank earmarked N10 billion for the acquisition of agro-equipment to support agricultural service providers and farmers In Nigeria.

Olagunju made this disclosure in Abuja on Wednesday at the signing of the MoU with development partners on agro-mechanisation programme.

According to him, the funds will help improve efficiency, productivity in the agricultural sector and mechanised farming in the country.

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He said the bank had also allocated other funds for specific agro products to support farmers and boost agricultural production in the country.

“We have tried in the Bank Of Industry in recent times to come up with various projects in support of agriculture, one of them is the cottage and agro-processing fund which is a N5 billion fund.

“We also have the fish farming and processing programme, which is a N1billion fund and then the animal and fishery programme, which is also a N1 billion fund.

“The agro-mechanisation fund is N10 billion, which shows that we are according a lot of attention to agriculture, because our industriliasation must be driven by the agricultural sector.’’

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He also said that the fund would enable practitioners in the agric sector to access funds required to acquire agro-equipment for agricultural production.

According to him, potential applicants under the programme will be categorised into three groups, namely: micro, small and medium businesses.

He noted that the agro-business micro category would be funded with N10 million, while the small businesses category would have access to more than N10 million, but not exceeding N50 million.

He mentioned that the medium scale agro-businesses operators would have access to initial N50 million, but not exceeding N500million.

He said that the agro funding programme was expected to create about 10,000 direct jobs and about 30,000 indirect jobs in the country.

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