Agriculture Remains our Panacea for Economic Challenges – President Buhari

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Agriculture Remains our Panacea for Economic Challenges – President Buhari

By James Hughes

President Muhammadu Buhari says his agricultural diversification programme is yielding the desired results and is also helping the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. He made the disclosure in a nationwide broadcast to mark the 2020 Democracy Day. He said even before the emergence of the novel COVID-19, the country diversified into agriculture in order to revamp the economy instead of relying on oil alone. “Agriculture remains the key to our economic diversification strategy. The Presidential Fertilizer Initiative programme continues to deliver significant quantities of affordable and high-quality fertilizers to our farmers. This initiative has also revived 31 blending plants and created a significant number of direct and indirect jobs across the value chain. “Government is also revamping the cotton, textile and garment sector via a CBN Textile Revival Intervention Fund that would considerably reduce foreign exchange spent on cotton and other textile imports. “Through the food security initiative, we are promoting “Grow What We Eat” and “Eat What We Grow”. I am also delighted that more and more Nigerians are taking advantage of the opportunities in the agriculture and agri-business sector. I assure you that the government will continue to support the Agriculture sector through the CBN Anchor Borrowers Programme and similar schemes. “To protect our farming investments, we have deployed 5,000 Agro-Rangers and employed 30,289 in our para-military agencies,” the President stated. President Buhari also highlighted what the country was doing in the area of trade and investment. He said: “Our efforts on growing non-oil exports have started to yield some results. For instance, in the past year, our revenue from Cocoa and Sesame Seed increased by $79.4 million and $153 million. “Africa presents a huge opportunity for our export base diversification and we are developing our strategy to grow intra-Africa trade through the Africa Continental Free Trade Area Agreement. “Nigeria has risen by 25 places on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ranking from 146th to 131st and is now rated as one of the top ten reforming countries. “This development is due to the Visa on Arrival policy, consistent promotion of initiatives that expand facilities available to Micro Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, robust electronic registration and payment system, seamless processing of business registration and reduction of cost of registering business by 50%. We are confident that on-going efforts would result in further improvement of this rating.”   Source: VON

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