The Lagos State chapter of
the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN),  lauded the Federal Government’s recapitalisation and re-engineering of the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) to ease farmers’ access to credit.
The Chairman, AFAN, Lagos State, Mr Femi Oke, told newsmen in Lagos that the policy was timely and would boost agricultural productivity in line with the government’s diversification drive.
Oke said that although, the eight per cent interest rate on loans from the bank was welcome, he expressed the hope that the rate would be further reduced to five per cent.
“It was at one of the policy reform meetings we held at the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, that we suggested the reform to the present administration in 2015, just after it came on board.
“We told government that BoA needed to be strengthened because that is the closest bank to farmers and we requested that it should be reformed and commercialised like other commercial banks.
“We discovered that the bank was still on analogue and that calls for reform. Then, we suggested that the bank’s rate should be reduced to five per cent.
“Even though government is looking at a single digit interest rate of eight per cent, we still urge them to reduce it further to five per cent,‘’ Oke said.
According to the chairman, the bank should be able to loosen its strict collateral requests for farmers, who seek credit from it.
“In the area of guarantee, we should be able to cross-guarantee ourselves, instead of the bank seeking for the Certificate of Occupancy from farmers at every point of accessing credit.
“If the Bank of Agriculture knows you as a farmer, it can easily visit your farm and give you loan,‘’ he said.
Oke stated that since it had become paramount to put food on the table of all Nigerians, everyone should begin one farming activity or the other.
The government had recently said that it was recapitalising and re-engineering BoA and would be ready to give loans at a single digit interest rate by the end of this quarter.