By Meletus EZE
The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has assured farmers of its commitment to ensure prompt disbursement of agricultural loans under the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Anchor Borrowers Programme.
In a statement on Sunday in Abuja, NIRSA said that farmers who complied with the loans condition would receive their monies within five days of receipt of loan term sheets from the CBN.
The statement expressed optimism that prompt disbursement of loans would ensure timely repayment which was a critical component of the organisation’s mandate.
It said the CBN through the NIRSAL window of the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme was creating over 250,000 direct jobs for farmers and over a million indirect jobs.
“This is in line with NIRSAL’s policy stance to always expedite the funds access process of all applicants who have met conditions precedent to draw down.
“NIRSAL observes the highest ethical and professional standards and restates that all funds from the CBN are disbursed directly into farmers’ accounts and farmers can access such funds once drawdown conditions have been met.
It stated further that the organisation had launched the Area Yield Index Insurance, an insurance product tailor-made for farmers.
The statement noted that NIRSAL had also established Project Monitoring and Remediation Offices (PMROs) nationwide to work closely with farmers throughout the farming cycle to ensure success of its projects, as well as protect the interest of all verified farmers.
It assured that the organisation would ensure that no off-taker (buyer) would hold farmers to ransom, adding that farmers would get value for their produce.
It would be recalled that NIRSAL was designed with the objective of enabling the flow of affordable financing to all players along the entire agricultural value chains.
It reduces the risks of financing institutions while granting agricultural loans by building the capacities of both banks and value chain actors on good practices in agricultural financing, loans utilisation and repayment.
