Development bank disburses N100bn to MSMEs

THE DEVEL OPMENT BANK of Nigeria Plc said said it has disbursed over N100bn to micro, small and medium enterprises in 2019, leading to the creation of 3,192 jobs.

A statement by the bank reported Tony Okpanachi, its managing director, as disclosing this in his address at the bank’s virtual 3rd annual general meeting held recently in Abuja.

While giving a scorecard on the DBN’s activities and contribution to the Nigerian economy, he said the bank working through its participating financial institutions had facilitated increase in the MSMEs’ revenue as well as their assets.

He stated that the DBN had focused on engendering gender equality in its loan distribution and empowered youths with 52 per cent of the total loan disbursed to this segment in 2019.

“Through our 27 participating financial institutions, over N100bn was disbursed last year, impacting cumulatively over 100,000 MSMEs. So far, 3,192 jobs have been created leading to an increase of 10 per cent in the MSMEs’ revenue and 6.8 per cent increase in value of their land assets.

“Also, 52 per cent of loans disbursed in 2019 were to youths and women-owned businesses.

This is in our bid to promote economic empowerment and gender equality,” he said.

Okpanachi further stated that the DBN had set up a credit guarantee subsidiary, Impact Credit Guarantee Company Limited, with the aim of de-risking the MSME sector by sharing risks with the PFIs to encourage them to lend to this critical sector of the economy.

He added that the DBN delivered capacity building programmes for the MSMEs across the six geopolitical zones of the federation.

Okpanachi assured shareholders that the bank was on the right trajectory and focused its strategy on driving sustainable economic growth.