The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has announced the allocation of a total of 2.15 million bags of fertilizers, worth over N100 billion to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
Announcing this on Wednesday during a visit to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Olayemi Cardoso, said the purpose is to enhance the nation’s food production capacity, security, curb inflation and ensure reduction of food prices.
“The Central Bank of Nigeria places a significant emphasis on maintaining price stability as one of its primary mandates and food prices are a crucial component of inflation, especially considering that a substantial portion of household expenditure in Nigeria is allocated towards food and non-alcoholic beverages.
“This reinforces the critical need to address food inflation as a pivotal aspect of managing overall headline inflation rates”, the CBN Governor said.
Furthermore, Cardoso stated that while the CBN has been implementing several measures to curb inflation, in the short term, the inflationary pressures have remained predominantly driven by escalating food prices.
“This is precisely why we convene today to strengthen our collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture with a shared objective of mitigating the surge in food prices. In alignment with our strategic shift towards focusing on our fundamental mandate, the CBN has veered away from direct quasi-fiscal interventions and transitioned towards leveraging conventional monetary policy tools for executing monetary policies.
“In this light, we aim to extend our support and foster closer ties with ministries, departments and agencies that bear the mandate and expertise to undertake these critical initiatives.
“Consequently, we aim to enhance our partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, thereby bolstering your endeavours to enhance food productivity and security, and ultimately, curbing food inflation and fortifying our pursuit of price stability.
“In pursuit of these goals, we are delighted to announce the allocation of 2.15 million bags of fertilizer valued at over N100 billion, which we’re humbly handing over to the Ministry of Agriculture.”
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari while reacting, noted that the agriculture sector recently, faced challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, flooding, and climate change as well as the Naira redesign policy, which had adversely impacted farmers at the grassroots.
“So those effects and some conflicts here and insecurity there, really impacted on the agricultural production. But I’m happy to say that most of those things that I mentioned are on the decline, insecurity is on the decline. Also, we are beginning to mitigate against climate change by incentivizing farming activities in agriculture.
“Fertilizer constitutes the majority cost value in terms of inputs in any agricultural production. So we are very happy and we are extremely grateful for this gesture. We have right now a program called ‘the National Agricultural Growth Scheme’ that has been supported by the African Development Bank to give a 50 per cent subsidy of all inputs to our farmers.
“But with Mr. President’s intervention. We have gone a bit further again, to support farmers in terms of the other percentage”, the Minister said.
