After TNG Editor’s proposal, FG to start granting loans to media orgs

Following an appeal by Mr Ediri Oyibo, Editor of NaijaOnPoint.com.ng (NOP), for stakeholders to rethink funding models for media organisations, the federal government has said media organisations in the country will now have access to single-digit interest loans through the Bank of Industry (BOI).

Minister of Information and Orientation, Mohammed Idris, made the position of the federal government known on Monday at the Third Ministerial Sectoral Update at the National Press Centre in Abuja.

Idris urged media houses to develop bankable proposals to enable them benefit from the loans, which he said would be facilitated through the Ministry of Trade and Investment as well as the BOI.

The single-digit interest loan offered by the government to media firms in the country came at a time when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) jacked up interest rate from 24.75 per cent to 26. 25 per cent.

In another development, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, has said that an estimated 309 billion naira has been injected into the Nigerian economy through harvest in the past one year.

Kyari made the announcement while giving an update on the achievements of the ministry as part of activities marking the first anniversary of President Bola Tinubu.

He revealed that as part of efforts to address food and nutrition security, the government has launched the dry season farming with cultivation of 118,657 hectares of wheat in 15 states in acceleration of all-year round farming. He also said the government has procured and distributed to all states and the Federal Capital Territory, 58,500 metric tones of milled rice to dampen escalating prices and the fortification of crops with vitamin A micronutrient to enrich nutrition content and health value of commodities.

In response to persistent food inflation, the minister explained that the government has taken measures to distribute 60,432 metric tones of improved seeds, 887,255 metric tones of seedlings and 62,328 metric tones of inorganic fertilizers and equipments to farmers across different value chains to enhance production.