Business
RUFIN Programme To Generate 3.5m Agro-based Jobs
The Rural Finance Institution Building Programme (RUFIN) is expected to generate over 3.5 million in agro-based jobs for adults and lead to growth in domestic products of more than N300 billion.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, stated this on Monday in Abuja at the 2011 Financial Linkage Forum for agricultural stakeholders with the theme “Financial Linkage for Agriculture & Rural Transformation”.
Adesina said that the transformation programme was aimed at transforming agriculture from a government development project into a critical commercial enterprise.
He said that incentives being envisaged in the programme would ensure multiple job opportunities for the people to ensure that the sector regained its status as the number one economy driver in Nigeria.
“If you look at the rest of the countries of the world, private sector has always been in the driving seat in agricultural development.
“All the government does is to facilitate, create enabling environment where banks will support those in private sector that are in agriculture and where markets will be opened and value added processes will be put in place”, the minister said.
He promised that the government would prioritise infrastructure projects such as roads, water and transportation, to ensure farmers had easy access to markets, storage facilities and processing zones, among others.
Adesina added that the monopoly of the Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Cooperation (NAIC) would be broken, adding that private underwriters would be included in covering the associated farming risks to specific value chains.
He also disclosed that a de-risking value chain and stimulation of over three billion dollars lending to the commercial and small-scale farmers through a new CBN initiative known as the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NISRAL).