By Ugo Aliogo
The Managing
Director First Bank of Nigeria Limited and Subsidiaries, Dr. Adesola
Adeduntan, has expressed the commitment of the bank to continue in
financing agricultural businesses and enabling farmers.
Adeduntan
who disclosed this yesterday in Lagos at the First Bank Agric Expo 2018
with theme: ‘Innovating for a Sustainable Green Economy’ noted that the
event was indicative of their commitment to increasingly collaborate
with public and private sector partners to fully restore the prime role
of the agricultural sector as the mainstay of the national economy.
He also
stated that following their priority as a continuous financier of credit
worthy agro-allied businesses, their team of dedicated agricultural
professionals specialising in various fields of agriculture are
strategically located to identify and support agricultural enterprises.
He added
that the dedicated agricultural professionals cut across all regions of
the country, with a suite of customised sector and customer friendly
agricultural financing solutions.
Adeduntan
maintained that the bank had a large base of existing small, medium and
commercial agribusiness clients across the country operating in all
segments of the agricultural value chain covering primary production,
storage, processing, packaging and agro export, and others.
The First
Bank MD further stated that in partnership with public sector
institutions, the bank had supported several State Governments on
Agricultural Development Trust Fund Scheme (ADTF), which he noted that
it was an initiative designed to provide credit facilities to small
scale farmers who do not have collateral.
According to
him, “Under the federal government’s Commercial Agriculture Credit
Scheme for long tenured credit facilities to commercial agricultural
enterprises – at single digit interest rate – First Bank has supported
over 23% of all the enterprises supported by all
the banks put together. The projects spread across input supplies,
primary production, processing and marketing. Obligors include small,
medium and large scale enterprise in the agricultural value chain.
“Honourable
Ministers, you may recall that the Anchor Borrower Programme was an
innovative product developed by First Bank, as it was then known as
‘Industrial End Users Out-grower Scheme’, which is now improved for
enhanced delivery. With these experiences, First Bank worked immensely
to support the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in actualising the efforts
of reviving all the value–chains as envisioned by the federal government of Nigeria.
“In
addition, following the policy for playing down on importation of some
of the commodities and encouragement of exportation of agricultural
commodities, First Bank is at the forefront of adopting the supportive
schemes newly introduced by the CBN, such as the Non-Oil Export
Stimulation Facilities (NESF).”
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