Heritage Bank Plc, in partnership with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has set up plans to disburse the sum of N41 billion to farmers from 14 states for the expansion of wheat production project.
The bank, however, will register the wheat farmers with the Lagos Commodities and Futures Exchange (LCFE) for successful disbursement, as the farmers are expected to cover about 111,025 hectares of land to attain huge milestones in wheat production.
Meanwhile, being the pioneer bank to finance the first ever large scale rain-fed wheat production in Nigeria and also a participating financial institution (PFI) under CBN’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) scheme, Heritage Bank has taken adequate steps to create an enabling environment for sustainable growth in wheat production. This informs the partnership with LCFE for all value-chain stakeholders to interact and trade ownership titles to specific quantities of wheat by registering members for their clients on the commodity exchange platform.
Speaking on the project, the MD/CEO of Heritage Bank, Ifie Sekibo, stated that the partnership is basically to consummate Wheat Seed Multiplication Project under the CBN Brown Revolution Initiative, in order to ensure due diligence on loan administration, monitoring and recovery, which would bring about increase in the domestic production of wheat and close the wide supply gap in the Nigerian agricultural space.
Narrating some of the feats achieved, Sekibo, who was represented by the Divisional Head, Agribusiness, Natural Resources & Project Development, Heritage Bank, Olugbenga Awe, said that as a bank it partnered with CBN to ensure wheat planting in wet and dry seasons.
“What we want to achieve is to end importation of seeds and make Nigeria self-sufficient in wheat production. We are working with about 30 firms focusing only on seed production and also working with CBN to make sure we register all farmers. We believe working with LCFE will move Nigerian farmers from informal approach to a structured approach,” he said.