4 Banks honoured for supporting agric sector

Ghana Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending Project (GIRSAL) has honoured four partner financial institutions and two individuals for their various roles in 2023 to help increase lending to businesses in the agricultural sector.

The recognition was to encourage more banks to give more lending support to the businesses in the agricultural sector to grow in line with the core objective of GIRSAL.

GIRSAL’s core objective is to de-risk agribusiness financing by Ghanaian financial institutions, and thereby increase lending to the agricultural sector and help accelerate financing and interconnectedness of the agriculture sector to ensure increased capital inflows into critical value chains across the sector’s key components.

Absa Bank Ghana dominated the night by sweeping three awards to become the overall winner of the GIRSAL’s Partner Financial Institution Excellence Awards.

The categories are the highest total number of GIRSAL guaranteed agricultural credit; the highest total value of GIRLSAL guaranteed agricultural credit; the best quality agricultural credit; the best quality agricultural credit guarantee applications, and the best overall partner financial institution of the year.

Fidelity Bank Ghana won two awards — the most responsive partner financial institution of the year, and the highest staff participation in GIRSAL's agricultural & agribusiness finance training programme, while Consolidated Bank Ghana Ltd won the partner financial institution with the highest guaranteed credit of the year.

Eric Nkansah of the GCB Bank won the GIRSAL CEO's special award for best-performing relationship manager of the year.

Ricky Aboagye Poku and Eyram Atsu — all training facilitators, won the best facilitator for agriculture value chain courses and agricultural finance courses respectively. 

Encourage

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GIRSAL, Kwesi Korboe, explained that since the birth of GIRSAL, lending to agricultural businesses had grown tremendously leading to more job creation and exports.

For instance, he said GIRSAL had since 2019 helped set up two indigenous rubber factories and helped refurbish an existing one.

Out of these, he said one of the companies was adjudged by the Ghana Export Promotion Authority for raking in more revenue for the state to help change the rubber sector narrative.

“If we are able to work with the banks to finance more indigenous rubber factories $ 50 million annually is what they will be bringing,” he said. 

Rice

GIRSAL, the CEO said, was also pioneering a new model for the rice value chain, adding that one project for rice had been established in Afram Plains.

“We are collaborating and hope that by the end of the year, we should have leveraged finance of $ 50 million in the value chain. 

“This will ensure that we have companies producing quality rice similar to what we import to create jobs and reduce foreign exchange and allow these business people to move into other areas,” Mr Korboe said. 

ABSA

The Interim Managing Director (MD) of Absa Bank Ghana, Adolph Kpegah, said dominating the awards was an endorsement for his outfit to improve access to finance in the agricultural sector.

The bank, he said, had provided support to over 17,000 workers in the agricultural value chain.

Additionally, he said the bank had also provided over GH₵ 173 million in interest to persons in the agricultural sector.

That, he said, was not necessarily to pursue profit but to help empower and change the narrative about the county’s agricultural sector to create more jobs both locally and on the continent. 

Fidelity

The MD of Fidelity Bank, Julian Opuni, said the bank’s relationship with GIRSAL had become long-standing since the bank was a key advocate of the work GIRSAL did.

He added that the bank was committed to growing the agriculture sector to ensure that as an indigenous bank, Fidelity would be at the forefront of impacting the agriculture sector.