Diamond Bank Plc has supported more emerging entrepreneurs in its empowerment initiative called Building Entrepreneurs Today (BET).
The bank recently presented a cheque of N3 million each to five budding entrepreneurs in the BET sixth series.
It had previously given out N75 million to winners under the project.
The Chief Executive Officer, Diamond Bank, Mr. Uzoma Dozie, while speaking at a ceremony organised for the BET winners, said each of the five winners, who are spread across different sectors of the economy and the six geo-political zones, received N3 million to invest in their respective businesses.
He explained that the financial support by the bank was expected to help strengthen manpower, expand the product lines and create increased service and product values that would make the MSMEs competitive.
“We had over 500,000 applications and after several screenings, were pruned to the final 15; this is just to show how creative Nigerians are. We decided to support small businesses because we know how difficult the business environment is, and it is the only way we can guarantee sustainable economic growth and development in this country,” Dozie said.
On his part, the bank’s Head, Emerging Business Mark Ifashe said in all, a total of 30 entrepreneurs have emerged over the period and N90 million has been made available to them.
According to him, Diamond Bank in partnership with enterprise development centre is working towards empowering emerging business to become a full corporate and anchor corporate in the economy.
He added: “We are here to exhibit what we are doing in the field, how we are empowering them both institutional capacity and financial capacity. Some seed capital were made available to successful entrepreneurs.
“That is the financial aspect of the empowerment but institutional empowerment is the training they undergo. It is journey that has taken some miles which involves training and finally selecting from successful entrepreneurs who now got some capital from us to commence their various entrepreneurial activities.”
