Funding the Nigerian Agricultural Sector for Improved Performance: The Role of Migrant Workers’ Foreign Remittances Inflows

Abstract

Although there is a plethora of empirical evidence on the impact of foreign remittances inflows on economic growth in Nigeria, there are few studies that investigated the impact of foreign remittances on agricultural sector performance in the country. This study therefore examined the impact of funding on the performance of the agricultural sector in Nigeria with emphasis on the role of foreign remittances inflows. Specifically, the study investigated the impact of foreign remittances inflows, government expenditure on agriculture, bank credit to agriculture, the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund, and exchange rate on agricultural sector output performance in Nigeria. Exchange rate was used as a control variable. The Johansen co-integration test, Error Correction Mechanism (ECM), and Granger causality test were used to estimate the annual time-series data for the period of 1981 to 2021. The findings from the study revealed that foreign remittances inflows, government expenditure on agriculture, and loans guaranteed under the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund (ACGSE) have significant positive impact on agricultural sector performance. On the other hand, bank credits to agriculture and exchange rate have insignificant negative impact on agricultural sector performance. Among other things, it is recommended that recipients of foreign remittances in Nigeria should be encouraged to invest more in the agricultural sector.