The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has disbursed a total of N40.3 billion out of the N220 billion Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) development fund lunched in 2013, with microfinance banks accessing N2 billion from the funds.
Tobia Jonathan, head, relationship management of MSMED fund, who gave the breakdown of the disbursement, said that deposit money banks have accessed about N814 million, micro-finance institutions N100 million and some state governments have accessed N2 billion mark while some accessed N1 billion as first tranche.
“We are holding meet- ings and discussions with them to facilitate access of this N220 billion by entrepreneurs. CBN is doing a lot of discussion, collaborations to ensure that this fund gets out of CBN and then people will begin to do business with this fund,” Jonathan said at a workshop on MSME fund organized by the Sub-Committee on economic development, sustainability and gender of the Bankers’ Committee in Lagos.
He noted that the CBN has reviewed the guide lines for the fund to enable many more participating finance institutions (PFIs) access the fund for lending to MSMEs. Consequently, the collateral required for accessing the fund has been reduced to 50 percent from 75 percent.
Also the interest rates have been brought down to 2-9 percent from 3-9 percent.
“We have reviewed the guidelines; for example, formerly you have to present two years exam report, now we have reduced it to one year, making easy. We are toning down the guidelines to ensure that many more MFBs access the fund”, he said.
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