BoI endorses PRODA as cottage fund equipment supplier

The Bank of Industry (BoI) has endorsed the Projects Development Institute (PRODA) Enugu as one of the technology centres to fabricate and provide equipment to beneficiaries of its N5billion Cottage Agro Processing (CAP) Fund.

CAP Fund was recently launched to provide loans to beneficiaries who wish to establish small scale plants or mini mills to process Nigeria’s agricultural products.

“PRODA is also going to be one of the equipment suppliers to ensure that people who want to process Nigeria’s vast agricultural produce can come,  adopt technologies here and ensure that products are processed to final food products or inter-mediate raw materials for industries,” said Rasheed Olaoluwa, managing director, BoI, during a visit to the institute in Enugu, recently.

Olaoluwa, who was conducted round the facilities of the institute by Charles Agulanna, acting director-general of PRODA, said he discovered  that PRODA, like FIIRO, had developed a number of technologies over the years,  adding that the bank had gone to the workshop, examined some of those technologies and discovered that people were coming to PRODA to take those technologies to set-up businesses in many parts of Nigeria.

   He noted, in addition to the agro-processing equipment production, PRODA also had other technologies such as equipment for

producing pencils, which if actually commercialised, would make Nigeria the only country in Africa that produced pencils.

“Nigeria in the past had invested significantly in a lot of research institutes that have done a lot of work and we need to ensure that those works are commercialised and leveraged by the private sector to ensure that we fast-track Nigeria’s industrialisation. And some of these technologies include the cassava processing equipment, corn flour equipment, the palm-kernel cracker and oil extractor among others,” he stressed.

In his response, Agulanna said: “This visit is a window for the Institute to start to impact positively on the economy of the country and we do have a lot of researched product on our shelves and we think with this coming of BoI, we will be well guided in trying to disseminate some of the technologies that we have here and some of the R&D products.”

He stressed that an established outfit like the institute would not only provide direct employment, but had the capacity  to create indirect employment for others.