By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the most innovative service providers in Nigeria, Heritage Bank Plc, has praised itself for doing everything within its power to address the country’s food insecurity.
According to the Managing Director of the bank, Mr Akinola George-Taylor, the company has continued to support farmers in the country through the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
In November 2015, President Muhammadu launched the ABP, an initiative designed to boost agricultural production, improve foreign exchange and reverse Nigeria’s negative balance of trade on food.
Since its inception, more than 4.8 million farmers have benefitted from it through the provision of credit facilities via financial institutions, including Heritage Bank.
Recently, at the Bankers’ Award Night organised and held by the CBN Bankers’ Committee in Abeokuta, Heritage Bank was announced as the debut winner of the Best Supporting Bank with CBN’s Information on ABP for its robust publications of information in the media space on the several feats around the programme.
The apex bank also noted that Heritage Bank has continued to be a key financial partner that is creating economic linkages with small farmers and reputable large-scale processors, with a view of increasing agricultural output and significantly improving the capacity utilization of processors.
While commenting on the recognition, Mr George-Taylor said, “The award reflects our strong business fundamentals, resilience, and commitment to transforming Nigeria’s agricultural value chain.
“With the support of the bank, we have helped farmers boost the production of commodities and stabilise inputs supply to agro-processors which has helped in addressing the country’s food insecurity.”
“As a strategic partner that is complementing the efforts of CBN and other stakeholders in the agric sector, we have continued to communicate the broad objectives of ABP.
“The bank has focused on increasing finance to the agricultural sector, the creation of new generations of farmers/entrepreneurs, and growing employment rates. This has led to the reduction of agricultural commodity importation and conservation of external reserves, and the assistance of rural smallholder farmers to grow to commercial production levels, amongst others,” he added.
Heritage Bank has remained the pioneer bank in financing the first ever large-scale rain-fed wheat production in Nigeria and is a prominent participating financial institution (PFI) under CBN’s ABP scheme.
The lender, in partnership with CBN, has also disbursed N41 billion to farmers from 14 states for the expansion of wheat production.
Dipo Olowookere 
Modupe Gbadeyanka