FCMB, states partner to boost IGRs

The Group Managing Director, First City Monument Bank, Mr. Ladi Balogun, says the bank is ready to partner with state governments to finance agriculture and improve their internally generated revenues.

He said the bank was exploring new ways to assist the Kwara State Government in improving its IGR.

He spoke recently in Ilorin during a courtesy visit by the FCMB’s management team to the Kwara State

Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, a statement by the state government said.

In his response, Ahmed said the state government was working on strategies that would encourage commercial banks to play greater role in the financing of its economic development programmes as part of efforts to re-position the state’s economy.

He added that commercial banks would be expected to expand their agriculture funding windows to agribusinesses in the state.

The governor stated that the prevailing economic challenges in the country had made it expedient to explore various strategies in financing economic development.

Ahmed said, “Agriculture is gradually being de-risked; so it is making it quite enabling for prospective investors to come in here to see how to take advantage of what we have on ground.

“We have tried to make it as private sector driven as possible. We have quite a few individuals who have invested in processing which of course creates a lot of room for backward integration that a lot of farmers now go into structured large scale farming culture.

[Punch]