The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has asked the members of the National Cotton Association of Nigeria, Kano chapter, that participated in the government’s Anchor Borrower Programme to refund the loans.
Branch Controller, CBN, Ali Abdulkadir, disclosed that the 30,000 cotton farmers, who enjoyed the loan facility, should not delay in repayment, so as to enable other farmers to benefit from the scheme.
“It is a revolving fund as you collect, you produce, you sell and then pay the loan so that others that have not benefited earlier can also benefit,” said Ali Abdulkadir.
The CBN branch controller added that each of the cotton farmers got N174, 000 (inputs and cash), as total loan package amounted to N5.2 billion.
Method of Repayment: To repay government, each farmer is expected to give 25 bags of 40Kg, which is an equivalent of the amount received as loan back. The recovery process was triggered because cotton is only produced during the rainy season and as such, cotton farmers should have harvested what they planted.
“I am advising the leadership of the association to embark on an aggressive recovery because the loan was given to farmers through the association because the association know them,” Abdulkadir said.
[READ MORE: Cotton producers move to recover N4 billion CBN loan]
The CBN also disclosed it had extended a similar loan programme to rice, wheat, cassava and other commodities to enhance food production in the country.
Deputy Governor of Kano, Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna represented by a Director, Admin and General Services in the ministry of Agriculture, Hajiya Zahra Sulaiman urged the farmers to also pay their loans so that others could benefit from the programme.
The state chairman of NACOTAN, Alhaji Lawan Sarkin Noma lauded the apex bank for including the cotton farmers in the Anchor Borrower programme. He stated that it would improve the standard of living of the farmers and eventually stop the importation of cotton.
While I understand the Federal Government’s rationale for targeting small holder farmers with most of her agricultural intervention programmes, as this category of farmers constitute over 70% of the informal sector, I do not think that this strategy will eventually lead to the much required boost to the economy by way of agricultural produce potentially replacing oil as our major export product. Most of these small holder (local) farmers neither have the capacity to nurture and expand their farming business to the desired levels , nor share in the Government’s vision/mission for the industry. Shortly after receiving their inputs from the aforementioned programmes, many small holder farmers have been known to re-sell the additional inputs to agric input dealers in nearby markets, rather than deploying these to increase their farm holding as intended by the Government. These poor farmers are also known to be discouraged by low farm gate prices of agric produce which occurs cyclically. Therefore, it is my opinion that medium to large commercial farms should be targeted with most of these interventions since they already have the structure and capacity to expand, process and even export excess farm produce rather than complain about cyclical supply gluts. Countries like the US and Brazil who are major net exporters of agricultural products in the world have about 80% and 70% of farms in the range of 400 hectares to 500 hectares respectively.