Wema Bank Plc has geared up its commitment to making accessible credit facilities to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSMEs), as it announced that MSMEs and businesses in all segments can now access up to N153 million and N610 million respectively.
Funmilayo Falola, the Bank’s Brands and Marketing Department, made this disclosure in a statement. The credit facility accessible for businesses, the bank partners the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN).
The partnership, according to Falola, will improve access to cheaper funds for small businesses in Nigeria.
While saying the bank prioritizes support for smaller businesses, Falola added that under the new development, DBN will fund MSMEs through participating financial institutions, of which Wema Bank is one the selected institutions
“To ensure MSMEs can scale efficiently, Wema Bank has unveiled a simple, self-onboarding payment gateway platform for merchants to receive payments on their website seamlessly. This ensures small businesses can market their products and services to a wider community of potential customers, digitally, without having to incur additional cost on setting up new offices and managing operations from several locations.”
Recall that nine financial institutions were selected by the DBN, to handle its intervention fund to entrepreneurs in the MSMEs.
Results for the half year ended June 2018 show the bank made interest income of ₦9.09 billion for the period ended June 2018 compared to ₦8.48 billion reported for the period ended June 2017. This represents a 7% increase for the comparative period in 2017.
The bank reported net interest income of ₦9.09 billion for the period ended June 2018 compared to ₦8.48 billion reported for the period ended June 2017. This represents a 7% increase for the comparative period in 2017.
Profit before tax was ₦1.81 billion for the period ended June 2018, a 27% increase from ₦1.43 billion reported for the period ended June 2017.
The company’s profit after tax for the half year ended 30th June 2018 was ₦1.57 billion as against ₦1.22 billion recorded in H1 2017.
Wema Bank Plc is currently trading at ₦0.58 on the floor of the NSE.
This is a very good initiative to build the nation wide with the help of commercial banks reaching out to the need of the people easily where tech can record all the customers loans via application and deliver their search results.
The Development Bank of Nigeria(DBN)-Commercial Banks-MSMEs initiative, of which Wema Bank is part, is highly commendable given that SMEs are the employment generating hub of today’s modern economies. However, genuine and existing SMEs should be made to know what is available for them and how they can access these credits. This is necessary because AVAILABILITY DOES NOT EQUAL ACCESSIBILITY, especially in countries like ours.
Sensitization is very poor about the availability of these funds and this will lead to poor accessibility of the credits by the MSMEs and will definitely create room for exploitation of the borrowers by the participating banks by way of costly pricing of the loans. DBN,CBN and others need to let the end users know about the existence of these funds and what’s required to access them. Remember,AVAILABILITY DOES NOT EQUAL ACCESSIBILITY!
HOW DO i ACCESS THIS DBN LOAN AS A POULTRY FARMER
please, can I access this DBN loan if I have a registered enterprise but not a limited liability company?
That is must the company be a limited liability company