Emefiele says FG will continue to support agriculture to conserve forex
The Federal Government has restated its commitment to conserving its foreign exchange through an agricultural revolution, by providing cheap funding of about five per cent to farmers.
This was disclosed on Thursday by the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, in his remarks at the launch of MITROS Rice by the Ogun State Government, held at the MITROS Rice Mill, Asero, Abeokuta.
Emefiele noted that the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration considered agriculture as a sector that would grow the economy, hence its determination to continue to provide support to anyone or group of people ready to engage in agric-business.
He hinted that the administration had supported primary agriculture since it came to power over the last two and a half years, saying that the country would move from this primary stage to processing, harvesting, and milling of agricultural commodities.
Emefiele said, “I am happy today that under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, we are taking agriculture very seriously and that is the reason we at the Central Bank of Nigeria have made it a responsibility to say that we would continue to support any effort and anybody in an attempt to grow our agricultural sector.
“In doing this, we will provide food for our people; in doing this we provide jobs for our people; and in doing this, we grow our economy. This will go a long way to conserve our foreign exchange.
” We would no longer be spending foreign exchange to import agricultural produce. We would eat what we produce and we would produce what we eat.
” Now having supported so far what I call primary agriculture, the farmers would see to it that we grow rice, cassava. The next stage we would be embarking on is to begin to consider how we process the food; how we harvest the rice; how we mill the rice. We would be looking at providing cheap funding at no more than 5 per cent, for those who are going to be accessing facilities to acquire agricultural equipment like tractors, harvesters, or even those who want to go into fish farming.”
