Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System in Agriculture, NIRSAL, is providing risk security for over 800 Agro businesses across the country to maximise food production for export and local consumption.
Mr Aliyu Abdurasheed, the Managing Director of NIRSAL, stated in Calabar at the weekend while launching the NIRSAL loan project at Gbaglo farms that small, medium and large scale agro-businesses are benefiting from the technical and financial support of the company to ensure that more capital is made available to farmers to maximum food production in the country.
He said the size of the Agric business notwithstanding whether small, medium, large scale, loan facilities are available with the NIRSAL guarantee at Union and Sterling Banks which are partnering with the company as long as the business owners have integrity, are committed to the business and are ready to make the business profitable.
Mr Abdurasheed said NIRSAL monitors participating farmers through all the value chain beginning from the acquisition of inputs to the application at the right time and harvest to at the due time for storage to avoid waste and marketing to oblige the farmers the right prices for their products and the regular remittances to the banks to avoid default in payment of loans.
He called on small farmers to form what he calls GeoAgro Cooperatives to enable them to access loans from partnering banks and increase their earnings.
The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending says it has about three million farmers on its database and has facilitated over N128bn for agriculture and agribusiness across the country since its inception.
