Beneficiaries of Nigeria’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme are reported to be owing the CBN unpaid loans to the sum of ₦463b as at the end of March, 2021. This was revealed in a Data from the CBN’s Economic Report.
The beneficiaries include farmers cultivating cereal, rice, maize, wheat, cotton, roots and tubers, sugarcane, tree crops, legumes, tomato and livestock.
The report also revealed that the loans were disbursed to beneficiaries through deposit money banks, development finance banks and microfinance banks which the programme recognises as participating financial institutions but only ₦152.3b had been repaid so far while outstanding loans stood at ₦463b.
Experts have reviewed loan repayments under the programme and the rising default rate has been linked to rising insecurity in certain parts of the country, especially the food-producing states.
The objective of the ABP according to the CBN’s guidelines is to create economic linkage between smallholder farmers and reputable large-scale processors with a view to increasing agricultural output and significantly improving capacity utilisation of agricultural firms. The sum of ₦615.4b has been disbursed since inception to 3.04 million farmers .
