Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) and a Moroccan bank of agriculture, Credit Agricole Du Maroc (CAM) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to promote inclusive growth and sustainable development. Aliyu Abdulhameed, managing director/CEO of NIRSAL, and MTariq Sijilmassi, chairman, management board of Credit Agricole Du Maroc (CAM), signed the MOU, committing to the mutual prospecting and implementation of agriculture-oriented projects that benefit both organisations and their countries. The deal has rekindled their six-year partnership and is set to facilitate finance and investment, trade and support systems across agricultural value chains, with emphasis on smallholder farmers. Abdulhameed expressed confidence that innovative financing products that speak to the peculiarities of agricultural primary production would help agriculture financiers to maximise the benefits and incentives in the 75% Credit Risk Guarantee (CRG) issued by NIRSAL for primary production projects, as well as Interest Drawbacks (IDB) of up to 40% that diligent borrowers can enjoy. “Leveraging NIRSAL’s CRG facility, commercial lenders in Nigeria have injected over N152.8 billion into the agriculture sector in the last six years, with credit crystallization rate still below 1%,” he stated.

Source: The North Africa Journal May 30, 2022 08:43 UTC