The African Development Bank (AfDB) has issued one million dollar grant to the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) to restructure and strengthen its capacity in responding to emerging challenges.
Kabiru Adamu, CEO, Bank of Agriculture, who disclosed this today in Abuja, said the bank is working to recover the N60 billion owed it by farmers.
He said that the lifeline would re-engineer the bank to be more efficient and carry out its mandate for the benefit of farmers and the nation.
The CEO said the intervention by AfDB was timely as the new BOA executives had inherited a lot of liabilities due largely to the failure of farmers to repay loans granted them.
“My team inherited a lot of liability from the previous management of BOA, a lot was done to clean their books and recover so many loans and the loan recovery exercise is still ongoing.
Most of the beneficiaries are not willing to pay back the loan because they are seeing it as a national cake, but the bank will make all efforts to recover all the money disbursed as loan to farmers.
“The team has just finalised the 2016 outstanding accounts and work has commenced on the 2017 accounts, even at this a lot still needs to be done to ensure a clean book,’’ he said
Adamu said the bank has strengthened its risk framework in a way that farmers won’t just access loans freely as before due to adequate monitoring and constant evaluation.
Adamu stressed that reinvigorating the bank would boost the nation’s economy as it would facilitate provision of raw materials needed by the manufacturing sector.
“This will conserve foreign exchange on importation, reduce unemployment and create more lucrative jobs and curb the effect of rural-urban migration.
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