‘How Nigeria can bridge N617 billion funding gap for SMEs’

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Guardianng June 23, 2021 4:32 a.m.

‘How Nigeria can bridge N617 billion funding gap for SMEs’

LCCI President, Mrs Toki Mabogunje, while speaking at a webinar themed, ‘Funding opportunities for businesses with the Bank of Industry’, said that lack of information (on the part of businesses) about the funding schemes offered by different institutions, inability to meet the requirements for funding, contravening application guidelines, submission of wrong or outdated documents (such as tax certificate, financial reports, CAC registration certificate), poor record keeping and poor credit history, that is failure to service previous facility prevents business owners from accessing another, are major factors inhibiting many businesses from accessing loans from financial institutions.

She added that between 2015 and 2020, N969.6bn was disbursed to over three million enterprises, noting that to bridge the gaps in many business plans presented to the bank, consultants in the form of Business Development Service Providers (BDSPs) were appointed by the bank to assist businesses in accessing loans.

According to him, the bank also eased the collateral requirements, having realised that most of the loan requirements are below N10 million to increase access to its funds, adding that interest rates have equally been reduced due to the pandemic to help businesses thrive.

He stated that businesses do not need to know anyone in the bank to access funding as standardised procedures and platforms have been created to address the gap.

According to her, we always ensure that we provide relatively lower interest rates than that of the commercial banks so that businesses can access the funding that helps development and societal impact..

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