BOI loans to SMEs increase 188% to N23bn

BANK OF IN DUSTRY (BOI) loans given out to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have increased by 188 percent from N8 billion as total loans given out to the sector in 2017 compared to a total loan of N23 billion disbursed to SME’s in the first nine months of 2018.

Tobin Jonathan, the executive director of Bank of Industry (BOI), corporate services, who revealed this said the BOI had last year disbursed about N66 billion to hundreds of SMEs in 2016.

He disclosed this in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital over weekend, while contributing to the topic “Incentivizing lending to boost employmentelastic sectors of the economy.” at the on-going 26th edition of the seminar organized by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for finance correspondents and business editors,

According to Jonathan, the BOI, as a government agency established primarily to lend to businesses that boost the nation’s industrial capacity, secured an Afreximbank syndicated loan of $750 million, adding that the syndicated loan secured with the assistance of Afreximbank and backed by the CBN was deployed by the bank in deepening support for the economy.

Also contributing to the theme of the conference, Babajide Arowosafe executive director (Technical) Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, (NIRSAL) – an arm of the CBN established to de- risk investment in the agriculture value chain, said the agency had helped facilitate a total of N78 billion for the agricultural value chain.

Arowasafe said that NIRSAL was an active player in the CBN Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) window for intervention, adding that the agency provided over N30 billion within a short span of its existence to smallholder farmers.