BOI grows assets to N1.8tr in 2020

The Bank of Industry has disclosed that despite the challenging year, group total assets grew from N1.04 trillion to N1.86tr between 2019 and 2020.

At its 2020 Annual General Meeting, held virtually, Mr Aliyu Abdulrahman Dikko, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, attributed the 79.1 percent increase largely to the successful debt syndications of €1 billion and $1bn that was concluded in March and December 2020.

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The result indicates that the group’s total equity increased by 15.3% from N293.08bn in the previous year to N336.48bn in 2020; while loans and advances grew by 1.3% to N749.84bn. Its Profit Before Tax fell by 9.6% to N35.54bn.

Dikko said the Bank, through its partnership with the federal government on the National Social Intervention Programme, facilitated the disbursement N2.5bn and N1.2bn under the N-Power and Government Enterprise & Empowerment Programmes to 300,011 and 109,039 beneficiaries respectively.

“We also reduced interest rates on all BOI-funded projects by 2% p.a. – from 10% to 8% – for a 1-year period, and granted an additional moratorium of 3 months on principal repayment granted to all beneficiaries,” he added.

The Managing Director of BOI, Kayode Pitan in his comment said: “Our main priorities shall be to work with existing customers to ensure their full recovery post-COVID-19.

“We shall also seek new prospects in need of finance to either set up or scale up their business operations. To facilitate this, we intend to take a multi-pronged approach that will see us improving the quality of service offerings and identifying new business sectors and opportunities towards expanding our target market.”