By Tony Obiechina, Abuja
The Central Bank of Nigeria has received 224 applications valued at N294.91bn for real sector projects in agriculture, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and services.
CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele made the disclosure while reading the communique of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the end of of it’s two-day meeting held in Abuja.
He said the applications for the projects were made under the 100 for 100 Policy on Production and Productivity (PPP), which was introduced to stimulate the flow of finance and investments to enterprises and projects with potential to kick-start a sustainable economic growth trajectory, accelerate structural transformation, promote diversification, and improve productivity
The Governor said, “The Bank has received 224 applications, valued at N294.91bn for real sector projects in agriculture, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and services.
“The applications are currently being processed and the first batch of beneficiaries under the intervention will be announced on 31st January 2022, with their names published in national dailies.
“These projects have been carefully selected in line with the approved selection criteria as contained in the guidelines.”
Emefiele said the Committee reviewed the performance of the Bank’s intervention programmes aimed at stimulating productivity in manufacturing/industries, agriculture, energy/infrastructure, healthcare and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
Between November and December 2021, he said under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, the Bank disbursed N75.99bn to support the cultivation of over 383,000 hectares of maize, rice and wheat during the 2022 dry season.
He explained further that this brought the cumulative disbursements under the Programme to N927.94bn to over 4.5 million smallholder farmers cultivating 21 commodities across the country.
According to him, all excess output aggregated from the financed farmers will be released to the Nigeria Commodity Exchange to help moderate the prices of food in the market.
“The Bank also released N1.76bn to finance two large-scale agricultural projects under the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme.
“In addition, the Bank disbursed the sum of N151.23bn under the Real Sector Facility to 15 additional projects in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and services.
“The funds were utilized for both greenfield and brownfield (expansion) projects under the Covid-19 Intervention for the Manufacturing Sector and the Real Sector Support Facility from Differentiated Cash Reserve Requirement”, he added.
He put the cumulative disbursements under the Real Sector Facility currently at N1.4trn to 331 projects across the country.
As part of its effort to support the resilience of the healthcare sector, Emefiele said the Bank also disbursed N498m to two healthcare projects under the Healthcare Sector Intervention Facility, bringing the cumulative disbursements to N108.85bn for 118 projects, comprising of 31 pharmaceuticals, 82 hospital and 4 other services.
He explained that in order to support households and businesses affected by Covid-19, the CBN disbursed N20.29bn to 40,521 beneficiaries, comprising 35,340 households and 5,181 small businesses under the Targeted Credit Facility (TCF) within the period.
According to him, the cumulative disbursements under the TCF stood at N369.78bn to 777,666 beneficiaries, comprising 648,052 households and 129,614 small businesses.
To further promote entrepreneurship development among Nigerian youths, he said the Bank disbursed N293m to 59 beneficiaries under the recently introduced Tertiary Institutions Entrepreneurship Scheme.
Under the National Mass Metering Programme, he said the sum of N47.83bn was disbursed for the procurement and installation of 858,026 electricity meters across the country.
In addition, he said the Bank released N274.33bn to power sector players, as part of its effort to support the sector under the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Payment Assurance Facility.
This was in addition to the N20.58bn released to Distribution Companies (DisCos) under the Nigeria Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility.
To further support the development of enabling infrastructure in the gas industry, the CBN governor said additional N3bn was released for the augmentation of an existing infrastructure, bringing the cumulative disbursements under the Intervention Facility for National Gas Expansion Programme to N42.20bn for six projects.
