Only 11% of fertiliser subsidy gets to farmers - Sanusi

Only 11 percent of Nigerian farmers get fertiliser at subsidised price, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has said.Addressing members of the House of Representative committee on Agriculture led by Rep Mohammed Moguno (ANPP, Borno) at the National Assembly yesterday, Sanusi said that the 89 percent of the subsidies on fertiliser are diverted fraudulently.The CBN boss lamented that the nation's agricultural sector was grossly under-funded and said fertilizers supplied to farmers do not actually weigh up to 50kg and that half of such bags were filled with ordinary sand.'It is difficult to fix the financial value chain until the nation can fix the commodity value chain,' Sanusi said.He also disclosed that Nigeria was a net importer of agricultural products with imports totaling N630bn annually but expressed hope the country could grow its output by 160% from N14.85 trillion today to N34 trillion by year 2030.'This growth potential comes from potential to increase yields to 80-100% of benchmark countries; increase acreage by 14m ha new agricultural land, approximately 38% of Nigeria's unused arable land of 36.9m ha; and shift 20% of production to higher value crops.'Sanusi also disclosed that the CBN had designed a technical assistance programme code named Nigeria Incentive Based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) to 'de-risk' the agricultural value chain in order to build long-term capacity and institutionalize agric-lending incentives.
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