The Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) has gulped N948 billion from the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) purse.
The apex bank made this disclosure, as it stressed the need for insurance cover for farmers under the programme.
“Specifically, under the Anchor Borrowers Programme, we have disbursed N948bn to 4,478,381 smallholder farmers who cultivated 5.2 million hectares of farmland across the country, thereby creating 12.5 million direct and indirect jobs,” a speech quoted the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, as saying.
What you should know about the Anchor Borrowers Programme
President Muhammadu Buhari, in 2015, launched this initiative to boost agricultural production, improve foreign exchange and reverse Nigeria’s negative balance of trade on food.
Smallholder farmers cultivating cereals (rice, maize, wheat, etc.) cotton, roots and tubers, sugarcane, tree crops, legumes, tomato, and livestock are those captured under this initiative.
Loans are disbursed to the beneficiary farmers through Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), and Microfinance Banks (MFBs), which the programme recognises as Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs).
According to the guidelines of the programme, upon harvest, the farmer repays their loans by taking their harvest to ‘anchors’ who pay the cash equivalent to the farmer’s account.
Recently, the President said the ABP, which was launched six years ago, had supported over 4.8 million smallholder farmers across Nigeria to boost the production of agricultural commodities in the country.
“The Anchor Borrowers Programme has so far supported over 4.8 million smallholder farmers across Nigeria for the production of 23 agricultural commodities, including maize, rice, oil palm, cocoa, cotton, cassava, tomato, and livestock. Today, rice production in Nigeria has increased to over 7.5 million metric tonnes annually,” Buhari stated.
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