The Managing Director, Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Prof. Danbaba Danju, has called for government’s involvement in the provision of agriculture infrastructure value chain in the country.
Danju made the call in a paper: Financing Agricultural Value Chain, at the Exporter Enlightenment Forum organised by NEXIM Bank in Makurdi, on Friday.
Danju said government should drive the process by financing semi processing of value addition for agricultural commodities to attract commensurate returns on investments.
He said governments’ involvement was needed for construction of roads, water and rail lines, silos, dams and irrigation to boost agriculture.
The managing director suggested the promotion of research and development of technologies suited for the country’s soil topography as another means of ensuring improved harvest.
He called on the government to execute such programs and concession them out to private companies for effective management.
Danju also called for Public Private Partnership (PPP) to provide cold rooms, warehouses, and development of high yielding seed varieties to accelerate agricultural value chain.
He noted that agricultural value chain had been bogged down by bad roads, lack of storage facilities, and absence of water and power.
According to him, inadequate funding is another major constraint of agro-business in the country coupled with unfair external competition and poor practices.
These, he said resulted in wastages, poor pricing of commodities which could only be cured by adequate capitalisation of Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) to meet agricultural credit demands.
Danju called for credits by commercial banks at concessionary interest rates and for government to provide funds for commercial agriculture credit scheme to commercial farmers.
He suggested the inclusion of BOA, Bank of Industry and NEXIM Bank as main players in the provision of credit to the agricultural value chain.