Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Bank Plc, Abubakar Suleiman, alongside other stakeholders have identified lack of trust as a major challenge affecting the growth of the Nigerian commodity market.
Suleiman, while delivering a welcome address at a webinar organised recently as part of measures to promote SABEX, a digital commodity exchange empowered by blockchain technology, stated that there was in recent times no trust among players in the sub-sector, from farmers to micro players and exporters across the value chain.
The webinar, themed ‘Agro commodities as a viable asset class’, sought to address challenges in the exchange of agro commodities while encouraging the adoption of SABEX, which ensures that traders can pledge their warehoused agricultural goods as collateral to access instant loans.
Suleiman said there was a need to build trust in the payment, partnership, product, price and delivery elements of the agro commodity trading business, adding that “we need to financialise commodities to the point that they are similar to digital assets.”