By Omodele Adigun

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Just as the disbursement of the N26 billion Agriculture/Small and Medium Enterprises (AGSME) fund is set to commence, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) should bend over backwards to ensure that the facility gets to its beneficiaries. This was the wish of an agro-enterpreneur, Mrs Yemisi Iranloye, the Managing Director of Psaltry International Limited, Iseyin, Oyo State, while advising the apex bank on how to make its intervention schemes achieve their objectives. Recall that “the objective of the AGSME is to catalyze growth in SMEs to ease access to finance; build capacity in the agriculture and SME sectors, create jobs and ultimately to improve prosperity”, according to Mrs Bola Adesola, the Managing Director of Standard Chartered Bank, while speaking on the initiative recently in Lagos after a Bankers’ Committee meeting. AGSME is a brainchild of the Committee in collaboration with the CBN, the highest contributor to the fund. At its launch last year during the Bankers’ Committee Retreat in Lagos, the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said that the scheme would “dwell on improving the productivity of farmers, manufacturers and firms, as well as their access to finance, in order to produce goods and services that can be made in Nigeria, thereby improving job creation and growth for the nation as a whole.” Emefiele stated that the two sectors –agriculture and the manufacturing- were central to the the country’s efforts at revitalising the economy. “They are recognised worldwide as catalysts for rapid growth, job creation and poverty reduction. Agriculture, for example, remains the largest employer of labour in Nigeria and contributes about 24.2 per cent of our GDP,” he stated. It has been said times without number that Nigerian agriculture has high potential, but actualizing it depends on concerted efforts to address the major challenges confronting the sector. “These include access to finance, particularly, by small scale farmers who currently dominate the sector”, stated Dr (Mrs) Grace Evbuomwan, a senior lecturer at the Department of Banking & Finance, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State. According to her, “the level of funding that the agricultural sector had received over the years have not been adequate. Both the government and the financial institutions in the country have not given the agricultural sector adequate attention, despite its importance. “Consequently, the Nigerian agricultural sector have not been able to perform its assigned roles in economic development sustainably.” That was the reason, Emefiele observed: “For quite some time now, funding the necessary investment required for the transformation of the agriculture and manufacturing sectors has become a major priority of the CBN.” Commenting on the AGSME fund pending disbursement, Mrs Tomi Somefun, the Managing Director of Unity Bank Plc, said the framework for this was in the works. “This is being finalised and disbursement would start by the end of this quarter,” she added. But Mrs Iranloye, as a big time beneficiary of the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS) of CBN, expressed misgiving about the lenders’ commitment to the scheme, saying: “The banks, sometimes, may not be willing to take customers down that road. Don’t forget, it pays the banks to give you their own money than for you to take CBN fund. For me, I think the CBN should take a step further to publish how people can get its loan.” This must have taken Dr. Mudashiru Olaitan, a Director at the Development Finance Department of the apex bank, off guard when he said that the Nigerian financial institutions in the country are expected to promote capital formation, grow and develop the real sector by promoting agriculture, trade and industry, finance infrastructure and influence economic activities through the provision of affordable lending costs. “The apex bank, however, will continue to evaluate the effectiveness of its existing development finance initiatives such as those in agriculture, micro small and medium enterprises and export-import,” he pledged. Meanwhile, brandishing, CBN interventions so far in agriculture, Emefiele stated: “In 2015, we launched the Anchor Borrowers Programme as an innovative way of improving access to finance for farmers and manufacturers. Together with other initiatives, like the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme and Nigerian Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), they are now proving to be successful in several states. “In Kebbi State, over 78,000 smallholder farmers are now cultivating about 100,000 hectares of rice farms. It is expected that over one million metric tonnes of rice will be produced in that state alone this year,” he added. But how can a startup access CBN funding, Iranloye said: It takes time, it takes patience. I will always advise that for a young entrepreneur, when you start, open an account and tell them this is my dream. And I want to get there in 15 months. Share it with the agric desk of your bank. Take them through it. Don’t just open the commercial account, that bank would be treating you as a commercial customer. When you open a commercial account, go and find out the Agric Desk of your bank. So you ‘ll be interfacing with the Agric Desk. It is the agric desk that will do the paper work and present it to the bank management asking for CACS loan(for example) for a customer. Otherwise, if you say I just want loan, the commercial manager would give you a commercial loan. So most people don’t have the knowledge of what to do? Where do I go? How do I access the CBN funding? “For me, I think the CBN should take a step further to publish how people can get its loan. You can’t get the CBN loan without going through the agric desk of your bank.”