Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that banks have granted over N3 trillion loans in intervention loans that have been one of the critical ingredients for the economic recovery and employment generation in the country.
The Governor , CBN, Godwin Emefiele who disclosed this while addressing financial journalist virtually after Bankers Committee meeting said specifically, the banks disbursed a total of 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.
Assessing the impact of CBN’s interventions in the critical sectors of the economy, Emefiele said “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 sector, he said 122 major healthcare projects have been funded to the tune of N115.36 billion, adding that these healthcare interventions went to 31 pharmaceutical and 91 hospital projects.
This intervention according to him helped to support acquisition of 59 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners, 42 Computer Tomography (CT) scanners, and four Oncology screening machines.
For the AGSMEIS programme, which caters for SMEs in the agribusiness space, the apex bank Governor said that 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.
