BUSINESS Women still slow in accessing CBN’s N220bn empowerment fund
he Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that only about N60 billion out of the N220 billion Micro Medium Small Enterprises (MSMEs) development fund disbursed by the Bank has been assessed so far.
Director, Banking Supervision, Mrs Tokunbo Martins told our reporter that about 70 firms have so far benefitted from the fund since its launch.
She spoke yesterday at the end of the Bankers Committee meeting in Abuja, adding that the meeting has discussed some of the challenges affecting the speedy disbursement of the fund and the ways forward.
No specific data of how many women accessed the fund as at the time of enquiry in the CBN yesterday, but officials said they will compile and get back to us soon.
But Daily Trust correspondents discovered that most commercial banks in the country are still reluctant to access the fund for disbursement due to unfavourable terms to them. One of the commercial banks representatives who spoke off record said “commercial banks will not change their minds as long as there is nothing in it for them.”
He said the conditions do not favour them hence they will not be willing to go into such business.
But Martins said they have been receiving good cooperation from the banks in recent times and a lot of banks are currently participating.
Information also revealed that Skye Bank had accessed the loan and also disbursed N50m to Small and Medium Scale enterprises even with the stringent conditions but efforts to know what percentage of the N50 million had been given to women proved abortive.
An association, Quintessential Business Women Association, in their campaign for women to access the fund, urged women in Ekiti State to access the fund.
The National President
of QBWA, Mrs. Shimite Katung, gave the advice while inaugurating the executive of the Ekiti State chapter of the association. She said her group had been able to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with banks in 29 states, adding that Kwara and Akwa Ibom states have accessed the loan.
Despite that each state is expected to draw maximum of N2 billion to stimulate growth of the SMEs sector from the fund out of which 60 percent is earmarked for women, most of the women are not aware of the fund or how to access it.
Majority of the female entrepreneurs visited by our reporter in Kaduna said they have no idea of the programme.
Mrs. Modupe Olatunbosun of Desire Fashion in Goningora said she is not aware of the loan. “In fact, I am hearing about the loan for the first time from you,” she said, while she appealed to government to find means of making such programmes widely known so that the actual people it is intended for can benefit.
“If I am able to get such loan, I will get one more sewing machine in addition to the one I have, a computer weaving machine, designing machine and a generator to enable my work come out neat as well as be able to meet deadlines because epileptic power supply is a challenge to our work,” she said.
Another entrepreneur, Blessing Haruna, who is into leather works in Barnawa area of Kaduna State, also claimed ignorance of the CBN loan; saying she has never heard about it. “I only know of loans from micro-finance banks and I have not been able to access their loans because the duration of repayment is too short for me,” she said.
She said her business would have taken a better shape if she had had access to loan to buy an industrial machine for sewing leather bags and shoes among others.
Mrs. Chika Odemena, a poultry farmer at Ungwar Boro, also said she does not know about the fund assessment CBN loan; saying if she had known, she would have expanded her poultry farm beyond what it is now.
“I have been into poultry farming for sometimes now but it has always been in a small scale because of the financial implication.”
A hair dresser in Sabon Tasha, Kaduna Madam Jumoke Eboesomi, also claimed ignorance of the empowerment fund. “Nobody has told me about the loan, otherwise I would have applied for it. I need to get more dryers and some other equipment to meet the demand of the people but the finance to buy them is not there. A lot of customers will access your shop to see the kind of equipment and even hair accessories you have before they patronise you, so all of these require money.”
Meanwhile, the SMEs owners have put the blame for the poor assessment and performance of the N220 billion loan on the door step of the CBN.
In a recently concluded training by the Micro, Small and medium Enterprise (MSME) advocacy and support initiative in Markurdi, Benue State, participants said most of the bad loans are as a result of the failure of several other support services that were supposed to have been given to the MSMEs that are simply not there.
Mr. Okeke Celestine, the head of the initiative support group who spoke exclusively with our reporter said: “We are looking at the size of bad loans held by small businesses at the federal capital, states and local governments. The rationale behind it is that the CBN is currently not giving Micro finance banks money under the N220 billion MSME intervention funds because most of these micro finance banks are carrying several bad loans which have impeded on their ability to disburse more loans. We want to identify why it went wrong.”
He said after the groups training in Markurdi, they discovered very funny scenarios. “We discovered that monies were disbursed flat, they just share say N100 thousand to everybody, and we asked the people managing the funds in Benue; why did you even allow these people to be the ones seeking this approval in the first place? Why not as a state create a relationship with NAFDAC to fasttrack this kind of hitches?”
Okeke emphasised the need to sit down with relevant stakeholders and understand why these loans went bad and come up with remediation going forward.
“What we have done in Nigeria is deliberately create bad loan scenarios and allow the disbursed loans to go into debit and create serious crisis for the bank.
When these SMEs come up to pay and you show them a scary balance, he will simply not pay and the situation continues to go bad.”
He hinted that the group wrote to the CBN asking them to give details of the states they have disbursed to and details of the due process they followed to disburse as well as evidence that the CBN did what it was supposed to do in line with its own guidelines.
At the training, our reporter listened to testimonies of lots of irregularities associated with the disbursement.
Some of those who spoke said a single person received five disbursements, while another received seven.
The N220bn Empowerment Fund by the CBN is to provide funding to operators in the SMEs sector who lack capital to expand their businesses and who find it difficult to access loans from the commercial banks due to high interest rates with 60 percent earmarked for women.
Under the scheme, loan beneficiaries pay a single digit interest on loan facilities granted them, and have a longer repayment period, unlike facilities from commercial banks which attract higher interest rates.