Financial Inclusion, Agricultural Credit and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from the Bank of Agriculture, Nigeria

This study examined the empirical relationships among financial inclusion, Agricultural credit, and GDP growth in Nigeria from 2001 to 2021: Evidence from Bank of Agriculture, Nigeria. The ex-post facto research design was adopted to explore the correlation between three variables: Agricultural credits, Financial Inclusion, and Economic growth. The stationary components of the dataset were tested leveraging the Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Philips-Perron (PP) Tests, as well as the Augmented Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure introduced by Pesaran et al. (2001). DLS was employed to establish the mix of stationarity and non-stationary variables integrated of order o and others of order1. The findings revealed cointegration in the steady state, among all the variables included throughout the analysis. Coefficient value of 11.711 suggest a strong and practically remarkable association between LAGCRDT and LGDP. Coefficients for CBB and BCB were 1.30 and 6.39, respectively, while DCB was -728. One-way causation was also found between agricultural credit and economic growth. The study recommends enacting policies by the Nigerian government to bolster agricultural credit access to farmers through BOA and other related financial institutions and using financial inclusion strategies to drive inclusivity, reduce poverty, and to grow the economy.