Abdulwahab Isa 
Notwithstanding impact of COVID-19 pandemic on business activities last year, the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing system for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) was able to facilitate flow of over N30 billion into agricultural value chains from commercial banks and other sources.
The number of farmers working with the agency has also grown with the unveiling of NIRSAL Agro Geo-Cooperative model last year. NIRSAL Managing Director/ CEO, Aliyu Abulhameed, made the disclosure yesterday at a media parley in Abuja. According to Abulhameed, the organization’s balance sheet grew N140 billion, equity by 1,415% while its total assets grew by 87%. He said as enablers of actors in the agricultural value chain, NIRSAL remains operational for those who were allowed by the Federal Government to move around for the purpose of producing food and rendering essential services in the society.
He said the agency’s numbers grew in leap and bounds in Q4 2020. For instance, Abdulhameed said the organization facilitated over N148 billion in finance and investments for agriculture and agribusiness during the period. It aggregated over 3,000 agro geo-cooperatives with 500,000 farmers on nearly 800,000 hectares of land and enrolled 1.4 million persons onto innovative insurance products designed by NIRSAL in collaboration with a consortium of agricultural insurance underwriters. “We have also been up to some high-level advocacy.
To curb the dismal levels of post-harvest losses that Nigeria suffers, and create efficient routes for commodity movement and storage, we are engaging with and supporting the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment in the development of a policy on Secured Agricultural Commodity Transport and Storage Corridors (SATS-C).
“While pursuing our mandate that translates to positively impacting Nigeria’s economy, we have been building a world class corporate entity too. In the past year, we further improved NIRSAL’s structure and systems, maintained compliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards and successfully implemented the Balanced Scorecard performance management approach to tap the best from our talented employees,” he said.
NIRSAL was launched in 2011 and incorporated in 2013 by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as a dynamic, holistic $500 million public-private initiative to catalyse the flow of finance and investments into fixed agricultural value chains. It seeks to address the causes of low funding levels in the agriculture sector, including lack of understanding of the sector, perceived high risks, complex credit assessment processes/procedures, and high transaction costs.
