The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will fund 1.6 million farmers in the 2020 wet season to help raise farm output. The apex bank will also finance the farmers under its 10 Focal Commodities Intervention Programme, which would cut across value chains, Yila Yusuf, the bank’s director in the development finance department, said recently in Abuja’s Kwali.

Yusu’s statement was issued by his representative Ayoola Quadri who flagged off the farm inputs distribution process for cotton farmers for the 2020 planting season.

The initiative will help guarantee food security in the country and CBN has engaged 256,000 farmers in cotton production for this season through its Anchor Borrowers Programme, according to Nigerian newspaper reports.

The bank has reduced the interest rates paid on the loan from 9 per cent to 5 per cent because of the COVID-19 pandemic