FG’s 3% Allocation To Agriculture Unjustifiable – Expert

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FG’s 3% Allocation To Agriculture Unjustifiable – Expert

By James Hughes

An economist with ECOWAS Commission and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) RESAKSS, Dr. Manson Nwafor, has insisted that the federal government has no justification for allocating between 2 – 3% of the 2018 budget to agriculture.According to Dr. Nwafor, allocation to the sector should have been higher considering the high poverty rate in Nigeria.Speaking with Blueprint recently in an interview, Nwafor said the share of agriculture in government funding is too low stressing that with the figure, “there is no way we would say we are eradicating poverty and neglecting the farmers.”He said the agriculture sector needs much money as farmers still use implements that are almost100 years old. “So the bottom line is that agriculture needs so much money so there is no justification for giving agriculture 2-3% when the need for funding is so much.“The government has to declare it at the highest level that because of the importance of agriculture we are going to give agriculture that 10% or even more than that 10% and if we can do that we are going to increase growth rapidly because the farmers will have more money to spend, wewill then import less and create more jobs.“So the low funding of agriculture is seriously impacting on our growth rate as a country and a lot needs to be done there and the media needs to bring up this issue more and more that it doesn’t make sense allowing agriculture to be so poorly fundedgiven its importance to reducing poverty and accelerating growth in the country,” he said.On how to address funding problems in the sector, the economists said efforts should be put into moving more commercial banks funding to agriculture and small scale farmers in particular through the use of cooperative societies that are easier to monitor than giving individuals.“On funding, the government is onesided and then the private sector is another one and that brings to mind the issue of access to funding which has to be improved on seriously.“Commercial banks as at 2016 gave only 3 per cent of their loans to agriculture and that is very poor. It is possible it is rising-more banks are becoming involved but if serious attention can be paid on how to move more of commercial banks funds to agriculture and small scale farmers in particular.One way would be to to use cooperative societies which are easier to monitor than giving individuals, so that is one way of doing it and more funding will get to agriculture.“Another way to do it, this one is kind of innovative and if they can do it, it will be wonderful. In Burkina Faso I think cotton farmers found a way to levy themselves, so with the levies they put on themselves they got enough money to run their affairs, so it is like they were helping themselves.“So you take all these farmer organisations around the country, some have a million members, some have 5million members, if they can be transparent with their members, they can raise money from their members, use it transparently, handle their own extension, handle one or two things for themselves and they can even lobby for themselves,” Nwafor suggested.This according to him is more like collecting dues among farmers’ cooperative that could be draw on to help the members.“More like dues.So you are a farmer organisation and you have a million members, imagine that they are paying N1,000 per year that is one billion naira. So imagine that some of these organisations have N1billion a year, that is enough money to be sending somebody to the National Assembly to be advocating for them until they give that 10 per cent.“You talked about innovative source of funding, so one of them is that letthese farmer organisations be transparent with their members, they can fund themselves and they don’t have to dance to anybody’s tune because he who pays the piper dictates the tune.They get their own money and do things for their own good. They can hire lawyers to sue whoever is a problem to them. So that is one way and the other way is private sector funding, banks, that is another way of bringing out money,” he said He also explained that ECOWAS has been very active in galvanizing countries to respond to the Malabo Declaration as well as the ECOWAS protocols, “because we set Africa priorities in the Malabo and then set ECOWAS priorities in the ECOWAS.So the Commission has been mobilizing the member states to work on the two, as well as encouraging them to work on their own country priorities.“As we speak ECOWAS has mobilised funding from different partners to support the agriculture investment plans in the whole fifteen ECOWAS countries.This support includes high level expertise, economists, agronomists, project managers who help each country develop a good plan because results start from planning; if you have a good plan then your chances of getting goodoutcomes are better.

“And then the other level of ECOWAS support is with some projects that ECOWAS does with its own funding and it has been able to get development partners to fund. So these are some of the different ways that ECOWAS has been helping to improve agriculture performance in the fifteen countries, there are many others,” he said.

Source: blueprint.ng

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