By Olanrewaju Ajao The National Council on Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) has slashed the collateral on the N220billion Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Fund as part of measures to ease access to the fund.
This Council, chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo took this decision on Tuesday during its meeting at the State House.
The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, who briefed State House correspondents after the meeting, said the council deliberated on how to create awareness about the fund and lower the conditions for accessing it.
The fund domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), was launched by President Goodluck Jonathan last year.
Aganga recalled that in its inaugural meeting, the council had set up a committee to look at the funds and the conditions that were required to access the fund, noting the committee chaired by the Minister of National Planning submitted its report to the council today. .
He said following the reaction of the CBN to the committee’s report, the council took a number of decisions affecting the criteria for accessing the funds.
“The first is that access to collateral requirements which was initially 75 percent which made it difficult for some commercial banks to be able to access has been reduced to 50 per cent.
“All inclusive interest rate must not exceed nine percent. That has always been the operative of the CBN and we have stuck to that. However, the CBN is disbursing to these banks and the Financial Institutions and others at two percent from the original inter rate of three percent, Aganga said.
He noted that the council also deliberated on ways to make the fund sustainable across board for micro finance institutions.
According to him, this was important because the mirco businesses at the grassroot constituted 99 percent of the total MSMEs sector and “those are the ones that require the support of the federal government.”
He continued: “We also agreed that all government programmes should be better coordinated. As a result, we are looking at all the funds available and we will be making information available to all Nigerians on the funds that are available and the guidelines on how each one of them can be accessed by the average Nigerian.”
On the need for women to have access to the fund, he announced that the president had already announced that about 60 percent of that fund be made available to women while men and women with disabilities have also been prioritised.
In a related development, the Presidential Jobs Board chaired by the Vice President has announced plans to develop with a National Jobs Bill aimed at fast-tracking government’s target of creating two million jobs for Nigerians yearly.
Aganga said consultations were ongoing to fine-tune the draft bill before its transmission to the National Assembly for passage into law.
According to him, about 1.4 million jobs were currently being created annually.
He said the board would comply with President Jonathan’s directive to work with the private sector to raise the figure of jobs created annually to two million.
