The Federal Government has provided vehicles to three local government areas of Bauchi, Katagum and Ningi participating in the Rural Finance Building Programme (RUFIN) in Bauchi State.
The state Commissioner for Agriculture, Alhaji Tasiu Mohammed, distributed the vehicles to the assistant micro-finance officers from the areas in Bauchi.
He said that the vehicles were provided by the Federal Government to ease logistics problems in those areas.
He said that the Bauchi State Government paid N12 million yearly as counterpart fund to RUFIN since its commencement in 2010.
Mohammed further said that the state government had established micro-finance banks to handle farmers’ need in terms of loans, to enable them to finance their activities.
“With this development, there will be no more problems of transportation; so officers should ensure that rural farmers benefit from the programme.
“ More of such banks would be established across the state since farmers cannot access loans from commercial banks because of some policies and criteria that have to be completed..’’
Mohammed applauded RUFIN for achieving positive results in the past few years in the state.
Meanwhile, Alhaji Mohammed Wahu, the Chairman, Bauchi State House of Assembly Committee on Agriculture, has said that a huge amount was approved for the production and supply of farming implements and fertilsrs by the state Fertiliser Blending Company.
He said the action was to ensure that farmers were adequately supplied with farming implements to further boost farming activities across the state.
Earlier, the Bauchi State Coordinator of RUFIN, Alhaji Usman Mahmud, said that the programme was being implemented with a loan agreement worth 27.2 million dollars between the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Federal Government.
According to Mahmud, N29.64 million has so far been disbursed to 1,515 members of various savings and credit groups as loans under the programme.
RUFIN had also provided computers and software to participating micro-finance banks to facilitate their operations, he said.
“As part of the achievement of the RUFIN in Bauchi State, the sum of N29,640,000 was disbursed to 1,515 groups and N8,681,061 was generated by same groups as voluntary savings.
“A software and computers were provided to micro-finance banks in the programme to avoid multiple loan disbursement to a single borrower from different lending institutions.”
Also speaking, the Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Dr Dauda Abdullahi, enjoined RUFIN officers to put in their best to ensure that the programme achieved the desired objective since it is still at pilot phase.