By Tony Obiechina, Abuja
The Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) has disbursed over N1.4 trillion loans to various Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and created more than 1.6million jobs in ten years, the Managing Director and Chief Executive of the Bank, Tony Okpanachi, has said.
The DBN boss who addressed shareholders on the impact of the Bank on Thursday at its 9th Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Abuja, said the amount represented the total cumulative disbursement of loans from inception of the Bank in 2015 to December 2025, as part of its mandate to support MSMEs with credits to enable them contribute their quota to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
DBN was established in 2015 by the Federal Government of Nigeria in collaboration with international partners to alleviate financing constraints faced by MSMEs in Nigeria through providing financing, partial credit guarantees and technical assistance to eligible financial intermediaries on a market-conforming and fully financially sustainable basis.
Although there are over 37 million MSMEs in the country accounting for more than half of the GDP, less than 5% have access to credits from about 84 existing participating financial institutions in the country.
Okpanachi said updates on the performance of the Bank contained in the published 2025 Audited Account and Financial statement showed that beyond the financials, the impact of the Bank also covered building the capacities of MSMEs by training over 48,000 beneficiaries as at the end of 2025.
“We trained the beneficiaries in best practices, and how to make them assess finance from financial institutions that we work with,” he said.
On disbursements, he said in 2025 alone, the Bank did the equivalent of over $300 billion to MSMEs across the country, describing the year as a very good year, in terms of operational performance and impact of the Bank.
On monetary evaluation of the impact of the disbursement, he said the impact of the funds on MSMEs businesses were tremendous, as over 1.6million jobs were created over the last 10 years, to enable them make the rightful impact in the economy.
“In terms of numbers, in the last year alone (2025), we did over 180,000, in terms of the number of MSMEs, a lot of which accessed some of our funding through microfinance banks. There’s a lot more to be done, given the number of MSMEs we have in Nigeria, the demand and the need for assets to finance. We do this in partnership with financial institutions, by drawing attention to the needs of the MSMEs and the assets they finance.
In terms of dividend pay out, the he said the Directors of Bank recommended for the approval of shareholders a dividend payment of N85 per share our of a total dividend payout of N8.5 billion, which would form the capital of the bank. This, according to him was subject to the approval of the relevant regulatory authorities.
He said the recommendation by the Board of Directors was based on a maximum of 25% dividend payout ratio in line with the Bank’s dividend payment policy approved by shareholders at the 6th AGM of the Bank on April 25, 2023.
Describing the dividend payout as a demonstration of the Bank’s financial sustainability, Okpanachi said the interest rates, were determined by the financial institutions the Bank lent to since they take the credit risk.
He said the bank will consolidate on the achievements by deepening its support for MSMEs.
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