By Babajide Komolafe

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has released N96.8 billion to finance 86  agricultural projects across the country under the N200 Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme (CACS).

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“Since inception of the Scheme, the CBN has released the sum of N96.811 billion for disbursement to 86 projects/promoters and 18 State Governments,” the CBN said in in its report of the activities of the scheme in December 2010.

CACS was established in 2009  for promoting commercial agricultural enterprises in Nigeria by providing concessionary lending  for commercial farmers.

The  N96.8billion fund  was released through 11 banks and 18 state governments. The banks and amount released through them are as follow:

Access Bank Plc (N5.176 billion), Fidelity Bank (N3.50billion), First Bank of Nigeria (N9.135 billion),  and Guaranty Trust  Bank (N4.250 billion). Others are Bank, Oceanic Bank Plc (N2 billion), Skye Bank (N6 billion), Stanbic IBTC (N1.350 billion), Union Bank of Nigeria (N10.903 billion), United Bank for Africa (N35.162 billion), Unity Bank Plc (N5.50 billion), and Zenith Bank Plc (N13.835 billion).

The 18 state governments are   Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi, Enugu, Gombe, Kebbi, Kogi, Imo, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Ondo, Sokoto, Taraba Zamfara, FCT, Akwa Ibom and Rivers.

On the other hand the CBN had withdrawn from.  N13.934  billion undisbursed fund from three banks  as follow namely, UBA (N11.353 billion), GTBank (N581 million) and Skye Bank  (N2 billion).

The CBN disclosed this in its report of the activities of the scheme in December 2010. The report  stated, “Under the 2nd Tranche, eighteen (18) State Governments namely; Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi, Enugu, Gombe, Kebbi, Kogi, Imo, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Ondo, Sokoto, Taraba Zamfara, FCT, Akwa Ibom and Rivers accessed N1.00 billion each for on-lending to farmers’ co-operatives and other areas of agricultural interventions in their various States.

Details of the participation of State Governments by sponsoring banks under the scheme is shown below: Fidelity Bank Plc (Anambra, Enugu and Sokoto- N3 billion),   Union Bank Plc  ( Gombe, Kwara and Niger, FCT -N3.5 billion),   United Bank For Africa Plc ( Bauchi, Kogi, Nasarawa, Ondo, Zamfara, Akwa Ibom and FCT-N6.5 billion), Zenith Bank Plc (Adamawa, Kebbi, Rivers and Taraba- N4.0), Access Bank Plc  (Imo- N1.0 billion)”.

The scheme is  financed from the proceeds of the N200 billion bond to  raised by the Debt Management Office (DMO) and is managed by  CBN in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources.

The Fund can only be accessed bya  commercial farming enterprises, which according to the operating guidelines is, “Any farm or agrobased enterprise with agricultural asset (excluding land) of not less than N350 million for an integrated farm with prospects of growing the assets to N500 million within the next three years and N200million for non-integrated farms/agro-enterprise.”