New interest rate will drive Nigeria’s self-sufficiency in staples
AUDU OGBEH, THE MINISTER of agriculture has said the new interest rate of nine percent introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria will go a long way to drive the country’s self-sufficiency in the production of staples.
The guest speaker at the 19th Annual Lecture of the Catholic Brother’s Union, St Agnes Catholic Church Maryland said the new benchmark will encourage farmers and processors of agricultural produce to access credit facilities for the expansion of operations.
He said the previous rates of between 20 to 25 percent have had a crippling effect on the economy such that factories have shut on insolvency while existing ones struggled to repay loans.
“I congratulate the CBN and the Committee of Bankers for the new step they have taken on interest rate. An economy cannot grow anywhere in the world on the back of interest rate of 25 percent. Government can do so much but once interest rates are outrageous, nobody can bor- row. This new measure by the CBN is the greatest thing that has happened in the Nigerian economy in the last 30 years. If you don’t fix agriculture primarily, so that every family can feed with less than 15% of their budget, this country is in trouble,” he said.
Ogbeh, addressing the theme “Technology and Agricultural Revolution: A Tool for Economic Growth”, stressed that development in agriculture has to be hinged on mechanization and research as knowledge gap in agronomics remained a key challenge confronting production and other value chains of the agricbusiness.
Different researches, he added, were currently being conducted in the area of soil improvement and mechanization to designed solutions that suit the peculiar challenges of Nigerian farmers.
Tunji Owoeye, director, Elephant Group, who was also a special guest commended the government’s efforts at revitalizing the agriculture sector, asking that the security of borders be taken more seriously in other to wade off stifling competition with local producers by smuggled items.
“The Central Bank has actually agreed to begin to give support to Agriculture and agric businesses on single digit and we thank the minister for the support. We however implore the minister to deploy technologies like drone to the borders monitoring. With this and the review of ECOWAS treaty to support investors like us value chain producers, I’m sure that Nigeria is in for a good time in agricultural revolution,” he said.