1 18 Business/Agric
DAILY TRUST
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
FGurged to disburse agric fund through MFBs ALHAJI Abubakar Katagum, Chairman, Bauchi State Investment and Microfinance Bank, has called on government to consider disbursing funds for agriculture through micro-finance banks (MFBs). He said the approach was necessary to enable smallholder farmers to move from subsistence to commercial agriculture to
FADAMA: Kana asked to pay counterpart fund
conquer poverty. Katagum told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Monday that to achieve the desired goals in agriculture, the funding channel must move from commercial banks to the micro-finance banks. He pointed out that MFBs were designed to serve the needs of the rural populace; .
ard portfolios for smallholder farmers as whom they dealt with directly. Katagum said commercial banks lacked they rated them on the same scale as comadequate knowledge of the needs of rural . mercial farmers. Katagum further said that commercial farmers and in addition, placed very stringent conditions on access to funds, which banks did not consider gestation periods for even big-time farmers could not fulfil, on farmers in the disbursement of funds and so created doubts in the minds of rural farmers rural farmers. He said commercial.banks had no stand- over the operations oftl,e banks.
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From Halima Musa, Kano
KANO State Govenunent has been asked to pay its counterpart fund to the FADAMA 111 project to enable it go about its work, National Project Coordinator, FADAMA III, Bukar Tijjani made the call in the 4t11 North-West Zonal Fadama supervision mission, held at Nasarawa Guest Palace. Tijjani who was represented by the community development specialist, FADAMA 111 National Office, Dr v.c. Agu said it was orlly through the release of the counterpart fund that the project would move ahead. He said since the slate government paid its 2009 fund, it has stopped the payment, saying both the 2010 and 2011 were still not paid. He appealed to the state government saying, "I'm calling on ti,e state government to as a matter of urgency pay this fund so that we can move ahead. Without this fund we can't make progress:' In his remark, the Managing Director ofKano Agricultural and Rural Development AutQority (KNARDA), Alhaji Muhaminad Umar said his office was doing its best to ensure the success of the project He sai4 so far they have set up FadaiDa community associations in the selected local governments where the project is working. S~edding more light on the activities of the project, the state project co-ordina- . tor, Adarnu Ali Wudil said Fad.ma has disbursed about N124 million to 184 Fadama smali groups in 18 local governments outofthe 20 selected local governments. He said their main challenges were lack of counterpart fund from the state government and the attitude of farmers buying sub=standard materials for their farming activities, adding that the fadama project was doing its best in sensitizing the farmers on the need to buy standard materials. The perm-sec Ministry of Agriculture, Bappa Bello said Kana State government was ready to support the project, saying ti,e issue of counterpart fund would be looked into soon.
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