The Cross River Governments has earmarked N500 million for youths empowerment programme in the state.

The Manager of Microfinance and Enterprise Development Agency, Mr Terence Elemi,  disclosed this in an interview in Calabar.

He said the state government in collaboration with the Bank of Industries (BOI) made the N500 million available as loan to empower the youth in the areas of processing and manufacturing in the state.

“We are already collecting and processing business plans and reviewing them for submission to give out the loan for them’’, Elemi  said and added  that the Agency had so far trained 270 young graduates 15 people from each of the Local Government Areas on Enterprise Development and Facilitation Skills.

“The ones we trained we use them whenever we do our programmes and they help us in training others too. The Agency was set up to encourage the growth and development of micro, small and medium enterprises,” he stated.

“We do a lot of capacity building training, access to credit; cheap and reliable credit and work in collaboration with banks to make sure that people we train get credit facility from bank to go about the business. We monitor and ensure that businesses progress and the money collected must be used for the proposed business” he emphesised.

Elemi said that the agency had intervened in three core areas in the state on capacity building for process improvement, access to cheap and reliable finance and credit were given out at single digit interest rate.

He said the Agency had also trained and accessed credit for 230 young farmers across the state.

“One hundred and thirty of the beneficiaries are from Yakurr, while 100 are from Ogoja . The beneficiaries have started harvesting their produce and one of the farmers was the second best harvester at the new yam festival in Yakurr, held in August,” Eleni declared.

Meanwhile, the Edo North coordinator of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Alhaji Abdulahi Mohammed, has disclosed that over 350 hectares of cassava farm were destroyed by flood in Edo.

He said the flood, which affected Etsako East and Etsako Central Local Government Areas of the state, caused serious damage to the council areas which were known for growing cassava, rice and yam.

The farmer lamented that most of the cassava farmland destroyed by the flood was almost at harvesting stage.

The AFAN coordinator called on state and Federal Governments to urgently map out strategies of ameliorating the suffering of the affected farmers.

Mohammed said that the affected farmers would face lot of pressure coping with losses because most of them borrowed money to farm.

He, though commended the role so far played by the governments, individuals and organization, for identifying with the flood victims, called for additional donations for the victims.

Mohammed also urged the Federal Government to reinvigorate its agriculture policy implementation, especially that on cassava.