Bank of Agriculture rings in changes to increase farming output in Nigeria
Abuja — Nigeria plans to capitalise its state-owned Bank of Agriculture with 1-trillion naira ($3.2bn) and will allow the lender to take deposits, as Africa’s most-populous nation seeks to boost farming output and reduce food imports. "We are looking at 25-million farmers", as stakeholders or depositors, agriculture and rural development minister Audu Ogbeh said in an interview on Monday in the capital, Abuja. "We are probably going to take a major step by the end of this year, and by February, March, have a structure in place for the changes we want to carry out." Nigeria’s economy contracted in the first nine months of the year as oil output, the government’s main source of revenue, dropped due to attacks by militant groups on pipelines in the Niger River delta, and prices remained low. Farming, which mostly consists of crops including cocoa, accounts for more than 25% of GDP, and has expanded every quarter of 2016, while factory output and mining, which includes the oil industry,...
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