The Bank of Industry (BoI) has provided a total loan of N11.4bn to about 40 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Katsina State to finance their operations.
The Acting Managing Director, BoI, Mr. Waheed Olagunju, who stated this while inaugurating the bank’s office in the state, noted that through the loan, about 30,000 direct jobs had been created in the state.
He said the bank, in a bid to deepen its credit delivery process, had introduced products and services that would enable it fund projects in the 40 identified business clusters in the country.
As one of the major beneficiaries of the programmes, Olagunju added that the bank’s state office had identified 10 clusters in Katsina State that would be accorded priority financial support.
Some of the priority areas, according to him, are cotton, animal feeds production, food processing, meat processing, solar electricity generation (off grid), quarries, diaries, ceramics and tiles production, and technical and vocational skills.
Olagunju said, “The Bank of Industry decided to open its Katsina State office so as to sustain the institution’s continued efforts at serving Katsina State better and vastly improve on the turnaround time for processing transactions.
“Katsina State is very central to BoI’s strategy of ensuring that our development finance services are brought closer to the people of the state, especially in our bid to vastly improve our service delivery efficiency, while also reaching out to all parts of the entire North-West region.”
He also that the bank had entered into a matching fund agreement with the state government to float a N2bn MSME fund to provide financial assistance to entrepreneurs in the state.
The financing deal, which was consolidated on Wednesday, according to Olagunju, has become imperative if the BoI must meet its financial obligations to the nation’s numerous industrialists.
Under the agreement, he said that the Katsina State Government would provide N1bn, which would be matched in equal sum by the bank for onward lending to the MSME operators.
Commenting on the agreement, Governor Aminu Masari, expressed the commitment of his administration to the promotion of industries, particularly small-scale enterprises.
In order to address poverty among the people of Katsina, he advised BoI to ensure that 80 per cent of the loan would be disbursed to youth and women entrepreneurs. – Punch.
