… To continue subsidy on seeds

The federal government has reiterates that it would continue to subsidy quality seeds for farmers as part of efforts to encourage food sufficiency.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, gave the assurance yesterday at the 2016 Seed fair exhibition organised by the National Agricultural Seed Council in Abuja.
Lokpobiri said despite refuser by the statement government to pay their own part of the subsidy, the current administration has taken it upon itself to support farmers with seed subsidies between 70% to 90% leaving the farmers with only 10% to pay.
“I can assure you that farmers are already getting some seeds for the wet season, we have the money already to redeem, but part of the problems we have was that in 2014, 2015, the then government did not pay them but we are making steps to pay them because we know that some borrowed money from banks to do the business and government is continue.”

He also assured that the government is ready to pay the outstanding money of agro-dealers since the reconciliation process has been completed.
“We have been waiting for the reconciliation of the outstanding liability to the Agro-dealers completed, but I have just being told that it has been submitted yesterday, we already have an approval in principle by the commander –in-chief, President Muhammadu Buhari, that once the reconciliation is done, we should source for the money and pay off this debt that we inherited from the previous government. So I want to assure you that we will soon settle those debt,” he said.