Between January and October this year, the sum of N100bn was disbursed by the Development Bank of Nigeria as loans to 95,000 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
Out of this amount, N70bn, which is about 70 per cent, was disbursed as loans to businesses owned or managed by women.
The Managing Director, DBN, Mr Tony Okpanachi, gave these figures at the bank’s MSME summit held in Maiduguri, Borno State.
In a statement from the bank on Sunday, Okpanachi said 51 per cent of the N100bn were disbursed to youth-owned businesses.
He said the DBN was deploying new strategies to boost the growing network of the MSMEs that it was financing across the country and extend its reach to underserved areas.
As part of this renewed focus, he said the bank was taking several measures including the expansion of its capacity building programmes in the North-East, South-East and North-West geo-political zones.
These zones, according to him, have witnessed comparatively lower rates of disbursement by the bank.
He said, “A major challenge faced by the MSMEs is their inability to structure and put together a bankable business plan which makes banks view them as high risk and therefore unwilling to finance them.
“The DBN’s Chief Operating Officer will work with relevant departments within the DBN to put together an immediate capacity building plan that will involve assembling a number of the MSMEs in Borno State and making them go through an extensive capacity building programme.”
He said the objective of the training programme was to boost the capacity of local entrepreneurs to meet its requirements and qualify for inclusion for the DBN support.
Recall that the DBN commenced lending operations in November of 2017 with two microfinance banks with a pilot loan amount of N200m to about 300 MSMEs.