NIRSAL facilitates N101bn loans for 693 agric projects

Since its incorporation in 2013 by the Central Bank of Nigeria, a total of N101bn has been facilitated by the Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending from Deposit Money Banks for the agricultural sector.

The Managing Director, NIRSAL, Aliyu Abdulhameed, gave this figure on Tuesday in Abuja while presenting a paper at the National Project Management Conference.

The conference with theme, “Accelerating national development through project management best practices,” was attended by top officials in both the public and the private sectors of the economy.

The NIRSAL boss in his presentation titled “Project management as a catalyst for national development,” said the N101bn which the agency facilitated from banks was used to fund about 693 agricultural projects.

He said through the funding, which had already been guaranteed by NIRSAL, a total of 400,000 jobs were created in various sectors of the agricultural value chain.

He said the agency had also launched the Area Yield Index Insurance Products, which had protected about N6.5bn revenue of over 37,399 farmers.

He gave some of the benefits of adopting sound project management practice as increased agric productivity, minimal materials wastage, reduction in labour costs and improvements on cash flow.

The Programme Director, National Project Management Conference, Mr Taopheek Babayeju, said the conference which began a decade ago had indeed come to define the practice of project management in Nigeria.

He said, “Studies have shown that organisations that have adopted project management in driving their initiatives have succeed more; no wonder why many organisations both in the public and private sector, local and international now set up project management offices to support their strategy units.”

The Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive, National Bureau of Statistics, Dr Yemi Kale, said the concept of project management was vital for economic development.