The acting Managing Director of the Bank of Industry (BoI), Waheed Olagunju, has said the sum of N535 billion intervention fund for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) provided since 2010 has attained about 95 percent implementation so far.
Speaking to journalists after a session with a House of Representatives’ panel yesterday in Abuja, Olagunju said the intervention fund was provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for onward issuance to SMEs operators and local investors as loans.
The committee, chaired by Rep Emeka Anohu (PDP, Anambra), is investigating the activities of federally-owned Development Finance Institutions (DFIs).
The BoI boss said: “We got 6-year intervention fund of N535 billion from the CBN running from 2010. The performance of our loan is 95 percent, which is over and above the CBN threshold of 5 percent and industry average of 11 percent.
On the current economic recession, he said: “Government cannot do much to reflate the economy except private investors bring in money. They are the ones who can help the economy out of recession. Government is just to catalyse.”
Declaring the hearing open, Speaker Yakubu Dogara said the House has commenced the process of revitalising DFIs in the country such as BoI and Bank of Agriculture (BoA) to serve as catalysts for the development of SMEs and agro-based businesses.
The committee postponed the hearing due to non-availability of documents from most of the agencies invited and directed them to make such documents available within the next one week.
