CACS: 487 business owners benefit N407.36bn in 8 years

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has disclosed that 487 business owners have benefited N407 billion from its Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS) between 2009 and 2016.

The agriculture credit scheme that was introduced in 2009 is a sub-component of the Federal Government’s Commercial Agriculture Development Programme (CADP) financed from the proceeds of the N200 billion seven-year bond raised by the Debt Management Office.

The CBN’s CACS evaluation and impact assessment report that was released on Wednesday, disclosed that, “Since inception till December 2016, the sum of N407.362 billion have been released to 487 projects (436 valued at N327.362 billion to private projects while 51 valued at N80.0 billion to State Government Projects).

“The total releases from the CACS Receivables Account remained at N199.831 billion while the total releases from the CACS repayment account stood at N207.531 billion.

“The cumulative fund repaid by banks into the Repayment Account stood at N225.009 billion in respect of 445 CACS projects out of which 109 projects had been fully repaid at end of December 2016.”

The reported noted that administration of structured questionnaires to beneficiaries with a retrieval of 191 from businesses that benefited from a total of N147.87 billion between 2009 and 2016.