IMPACT OF AGRICULTURAL FINANCE ON NIGERIA ECONOMIC GROWTH (1986-2019)

Abstract

This study examined the impact of agricultural finance on Nigeria's economic growth for the periods 1986-2019. To investigate the study objective a secondary source of data was obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin various reports, Federal Bureau of Statistics and world economic indicators a publication of World Bank. Both descriptive and inferential statistics of Vector Error Correction Mechanism were used to analyze the data collected for the study and to achieve the study objective. The result of the study revealed that agricultural finance had a substantial impact on economic growth in Nigeria. Also, the p-value of the F-statistics computed for the test of 0.0000 was less than the critical value of 5%. This revealed that there was a significant long-run relationship between agricultural finance and economic growth in Nigeria. The result of the Durbin-Watson statistics obtained of 1.708009 showed that the variables of the model were free from the problem of serial correlation. Thus, agricultural finance and economic growth were related. The study recommended that a public-private partnership arrangement should be adopted by the government to be able to finance agriculture for consistent economic growth in the country.