The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) working with Deposit Money Blanks (DMBs) alongside participating financial institutions has to date granted over N3 trillion in intervention loans to boost economic recovery.
Governor of CBN, Godwin Emefiele disclosed this recently at a virtual forum organised to give the public update on the various intervention programmes of the apex bank.
According to Emefiele, these programmes have undoubtedly been one of the critical ingredients for Nigeria’s economic recovery and employment generation.
In his words: “Specifically, under the Anchor Borrowers Programme, we have disbursed N948 billion to 4,478,381 smallholder farmers who cultivated 5.2 million hectares of farmland across the country, thereby creating 12.5 million direct and indirect jobs.
“Under our Targeted Credit Facility, which was meant to help households and businesses that suffered significant losses during the pandemic, we have disbursed N368.79 billion to 778,000 beneficiaries comprising 648,052 households and about 130,000 SMEs.
“We have also disbursed N1.452 trillion to 337 Large real sector projects in agriculture, manufacturing, services, and mining under our Real Sector Support Facility.
“In healthcare, 122 major healthcare projects have been funded to the tune of N115.36 billion, these healthcare interventions went to 31 pharmaceutical and 91 hospital projects.
“This intervention helped to support acquisition of 59 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners, 42 Computer Tomography (CT) scanners, and 4 Oncology screening machines.
“For the AGSMEIS programme, which caters for SMEs in the agribusiness space, a total of N134.63 billion has been released to 37,571 SME projects of which 67 percent were directly in agriculture-related projects, 22.5 percent were in services, while the balance were in fashion, IT, and related sub-sectors.
“Under the Nigeria Electricity Stabilization Facility, a total of N229 billion has been disbursed to 9 DisCos to help cover their financial obligations to upstream market participants.
“These interventions have helped to significantly improve liquidity in their ecosystem and increase electricity generation from 4,000 MW in 2020 to over 5,000 MW as of September 2021.
“The Bank has also released N47.83 billion to 10 DisCos under the National Mass Metering Programme for the procurement of 858,026 electricity meters, because of these disbursements, the revenue collection for DisCos increased significantly to over N69 billion as of December 2021.
“It is obvious from the foregoing that the impact of these measures helped the country make the fastest recovery from recession ever recorded and changed the trajectory of inflation to an 8-month downward spiral.
“These policies and measures also led to a significant improvement in diaspora inflow from an average of US$6 million per week in December 2020 to an average of over US$100 million per week by January 2022.
The CBN governor noted that the problems the country is currently facing do have solutions as long as everyone concerned works objectively to understand them and dispassionately solves them.
Having applied the measures for 2 years, the CBN governor hinted that a review is underway to ensure that the interventions continue to achieve the desired objectives.
He announced that the concessionary interest rate of 5 percent on the intervention facilities of the apex bank would now be extended until March 1, 2023.
Comment here