FG okays $152.12m for agriculture

The Federal Executive Council on Wednesday approved the acquisition of $152.12 million loan from the African Development Bank (ADB) towards boosting agricultural produces in the country.

The Minister of Agriculture, Akinwunmi Adesina and Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, disclosed this to State House correspondents at the end of the FEC meeting Presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Adesina said the loan will be used to boost cultivation of rice, sorghum and cassava in 14 staple crop processing zones in the country.

Stressing that the loan will go a long way to add 20 million tons to Nigeria’s food production by 2015, he said that 120,000 jobs will be created from the initial staple crop processing zones.

He said: “Council today gave approval of a loan of $152.12 million dollars and a grant of $385,000 from the ADB to support the agricultural transformation agenda of Mr. President.”

“We are all excited about this because it is another affirmation by global institution of what we are doing and that we are on the right track as regard to agricultural development. Mr. President set a strategy that we will run agriculture as a business which is a major shift from how agriculture had been run before.”

“We no longer just focus on production but we focus as well on storage, warehousing, processing, value addition, marketing, logistics and trade. In other words, agriculture today in Nigeria is a business which we have to make sure that we provide enabling environment in supporting it to grow and to generate wealth.”

 Source: http://thenationonlineng.net/new/fg-okays-152-12m-agriculture/