Rice farmers in Anambra state have called for the review of Central Bank of Nigeria’s anchor Borrower’s loan scheme.
The Farmers commended the initiative created by the Central Bank of Nigeria that affords registered farmers to access the loan facility but called for an overhaul of the process to ensure rice farmers have access to the loan at the appropriate time.
The rice producers acknowledged the fact that the CBN is creating massive intervention funds for farmers, but insists that the biggest challenge remains that the farmers are not able to assess this facilities.
This, according to experts and farmers say it remains the bane to one of the major policies of the current administration towards moving the country away from a mono economy to multi-dimensional one.
President Muhammadu Buhari has continued to hint that the priority accorded would be accorded to agric production in his administration which he said would remain primarily in a bid to achieve food self-sufficiency, economic revival and jobs’ creation.
These development hence the need that the chairman of the Anambra Rice producer and millers Association states some of the challenges farmers undergo in the process of trying to assess the CBN loan facility through the financial institutions.
He lamented that the CBN initiate was laudable but got impeded by the operations of most financial institutions that exercise what they call
artificial scarcity and delay before the fund are disbursed to right farmers.
He urged government to explore the opportunity of massive employment creation which farming creates in the society by providing support in the acquisition of machinery as it is practice in other parts of the world.
