CONTRIBUTION OF BANKING SECTOR TO AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN NIGERIA 1981-2013

CONTRIBUTION OF BANKING SECTOR TO AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN NIGERIA 1981-2013 (ECONOMICS PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1  BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Nigeria, which spans an area of 924,000 square kilometers, is bordered by the Gulf of Guinea, Cameroon, Benin, Niger, and Chad. The topography ranges from mangrove swampland along the coast to tropical rain forest and savannah to the north. Nigeria is generously endowed with abundant natural resources. With its reserves of human and natural resources, Nigeria has the potential to build a prosperous economy and provide for the basic needs of the population. This enormous resource base if well managed could support a vibrant agricultural sector capable of ensuring the supply of raw materials for the industrial sector as well as providing gainful employment for the teeming population. Nigeria’s rich human and material resource endowments give it the potential to become Africa’s largest economy and a major player in the global economy.
Compared with other African and Asian countries, especially Indonesia, which is comparable to Nigeria in many respects, economic development in Nigeria has however been disappointing, Nigeria has become one of the poorest countries in the world. Having earned about $300 billion from oil exports between the mid-1970s and 2000, its per capita income was disappointingly 20 percent lower than that of 1975. Inability to tap much of the abundant human and material resources can therefore put the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 in jeopardy as a country is endowed with vast land mass, fertile soil and a good topography which is suitable for agriculture. In fact, the Nigerian economy at independence in 1960 was still largely agriculture based country contributing about 64% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), producing food for her consumption and cash crops like groundnut, cocoa, rubber, and palm oil for export (Iyoha, 2003). But with the advent of oil boom and its attendant free money from rents and royalties paid to the government by the multinational oil companies that dominated the sector in 1970s led to the shifting of attentions from agriculture to the petroleum sector concerning the decay and gradual collapse of the agricultural sector productivity to the inability of the agricultural sector to maintain an independent output trend. This is so because it has been noticed that as the output of the petroleum sector is increasing, there is a decline in the level of productivity of the agricultural sector. There is need to reverse this trend and for agricultural sector to grow in terms of output and productivity. The need for the banking sector to contribute to an increase in agricultural output becomes paramount.

CONTRIBUTION OF BANKING SECTOR TO AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN NIGERIA 1981-2013 (ECONOMICS PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)