DOES FINANCIAL SECTOR REFORMS AFFECT AGRICULTURAL INVESTMENTS IN NIGERIA? A COINTEGRATION AND VAR APPROACH

The paper evaluates the effect of financial sector reforms on agricultural investments in Nigeria from 1970-2009 using a cointegration and vector error correction model (VECM) in a long time series analysis. The descriptive analysis shows that the mean agricultural investments of ₦88,101.83 million during financial sector reforms period was higher than ₦538.78 million of the pre-financial sector reforms period and was significantly different at 5 percent (tcal>ttab at P=0.5) while the mean growth rate of 36.36 percent for the pre-financial sector reforms period was higher than 34.25 percent of the financial sector reforms period and was not significantly different at 5 percent in the two periods. The result also reveals that financial sector reforms significantly affect agricultural investments in Nigeria both in the long and short-run. It is recommended that the Nigerian government should adopt strong macroeconomic policies, thereby encouraging investments in the agricultural sector of the country.