President Muhammadu Buhari will unveil one million pyramid-shaped sacks of rice paddy in Abuja tomorrow, Wednesday, January 19, 2022.
The pyramids, which are said to be Africa’s largest of their kind, are located on the premises of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industries (ACCI) on Airport Road.
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Under the Anchor Borrowers’ Program, 1 million bags of rice paddy were planted and gathered from states around the country to construct the rice pyramids (ABP). Farmers were asked to return the bags of rice paddy that made up the pyramids in exchange for cash in order to repay the loans they received under the ABP.
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What you should know
The CBN’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) was started in November 2015 with the goal of providing aid to farmers and influencing the value chain of various commodities in Nigeria.
The CBN has carried out interventions aimed at sustaining recovery of output growth and addressing the downside risks to other external and domestic shocks to the economy.
Interventions continued largely in manufacturing/industries, agriculture, energy/infrastructure, healthcare and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
Read: CBN: Over N3 trillion (72%) of Intervention Funds remain outstanding
Under the Targeted Credit Facility, the Bank has disbursed a total of N363.49 billion to 766,719 beneficiaries, comprising 638,070 households and 128, 649 small businesses. Under its Agribusiness Small and Medium Enterprise Investment Scheme (AgSMEIS), the Bank has released N134.63 billion to 37,571 entrepreneurs.
Between September and October 2021, under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP), the Bank disbursed N43.19 billion to support the cultivation of over 250,000 hectares of maize, sorghum, soya beans and rice during the 2021 dry season; and N5.88 billion to finance six (6) large-scale agricultural projects under the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS).
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Cumulatively the Bank has disbursed the total sum of N864 billion to 4.1 million farmers, cultivating 5.02 million hectares. The bank also disbursed the sum of N41.2 billion for the commencement of the brown revolution, a large-scale wheat program to wean us off imports by 35 per cent in the first year.
