In order to deliver Cohort 7 of the GIRSAL Agriculture and Agribusiness Lending Course, the Ghana Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL) has teamed with Development Bank Ghana to organize a 4-day training event in Accra. The session had 55 participants from 12 Accra-based financial organisations.
The training programme was created to equip financial institution staff with the necessary understanding in agriculture, its value chains, value chain finance, risks, and mitigation strategies. By doing so, it will help to lower the risk involved with lending to farmers and agribusinesses.
Chief Executive Officer of GIRSAL, Kwesi Korboe explained that GIRSAL introduced the training programme to extend increased finance to the agriculture sector for export potential, for food security and to reduce the imports of food commodities coming to the country. He said the training is carried out with the idea of enhancing the knowledge of financial institutions’ staff to enable them better-assess projects to eventually help reduce Non-Performing Loans within the agriculture sector.
“We are also planning a specialised training programme to reach out to directors of financial institutions so they have a better understanding of how to structure loans, why lending to the agricultural sector is safe, and the kind of risk mitigations that are there. This is all about a mindset change. While we are working on practicalities of the issue, we also make sure they make informed decisions,” said Mr. Korboe.
Mr. Kwesi Korboe noted that the course is relevant and has been effective in demystifying the agriculture sector and countering the prevailing perception that the sector is high-risk one.
Touching on the partnership programme, the CEO of Development Bank Ghana, Kwamina Duker, said problems facing the economy are complex ones and can only be solved through partnerships by bringing diverse skills together, collaborating and connecting for betterment of the nation.
Currently, Development Bank Ghana (DBG) and GIRSAL are co-funding three (3) additional training cohorts between August and December 2022. The two-module course covers Ghana’s agribusiness environment, value chains, agriculture insurance and agricultural loan appraisal techniques. It is targetted at agriculture desk officers, relationship managers, credit risk officers, credit analysts and other middle-level staff of financial institutions. The course also includes a practical field visit.
Both organisations signed an MoU in March 2022 to provide capacity-building and innovative interventions to improve agriculture financing in Ghana.