FCMB To Boosts Agricultural Business With N147bn Loan

First City Monument Bank (FCMB) has stretched its loan portfolio to the Agriculture sector in Nigeria as the lender continues to deepen support for the agro sector.

BrandNewsDay reports that FCMB’s requested loan is a mid-sized or tier 2 lender that grew lending to the Agricultural Sector by 44 percent to N147 billion as of full-year 2022 from N102 billion in December 2021.

The FCMB’s credit extension is 8.50 percent of the total loan portfolio, as the Bank is making a far-reaching impact in agribusiness funding and capacity building through its various intervention programmes, including in the areas of digitisation and agritech. These strategies have led to much better finance for research, marketing, distribution/logistics, and storage.

FCMB has helped deliver Africa’s first cassava-based Sorbitol Factory, in the process empowering over 10,000 rural farmers; it has supported over 280,000 smallholder farmers and created over 600,000 jobs nationwide.

Flour Mills Plc, the largest miller by market capitalisation in Nigeria, equally received a $30 million credit facility and N1.50 billion overdraft from FCMB to help support its working capital. Funding worth N300 million was provided some years ago by the Bank to Tractor Owners and the Hiring Facilities Association of Nigeria (TOHFAN) for the acquisition of tractors that were distributed to farmers in Kaduna state.

The agriculture sector which was a major driver of overall economic growth expanded by 2.05 percent year on year (Y-O-Y) in the fourth quarter (Q4-2022) from 1.88% Y-O-Y uptick in 2022).

It is worth noting that the improvement in the industry is attributable to policies put in place by the policymakers and President Muhamadu Buhari whose vision is to make the country self-reliant in food production and boost export revenue.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) reported that it has so far disbursed the sum of N864 billion to 4.1 million farmers cultivating 5.02 million hectares of land under its Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP).