BoI to commence disbursement of AfDB’s $500m fund to industries soon

The Bank of Industry (BOI) has announced that it would soon commence the disbursement of the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) $500 million fund to industrialists in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the bank has put the total loan disbursement across various sectors of the Nigerian economy within two years at N870.44 billion.
Chairman of the bank’s shareholders committee, Muhammed Dikwa, announced the plan at the 53rd annual general meeting of the bank in Abuja.
Dikwa informed that the federal government facilitated the acquisition of the fund to deepen the bank’s credit delivery process and funding of the industrial sector at concessionary rates.
“As soon as BOI complies with the disbursement process which has reached an advanced stage, the Nigeria industrialists will start benefiting from the incentive-backed facility,” he said.
According to him, besides the AfDB’s funds, there were other existing development fund initiatives under the bank’s management, including the N5 billion BOI/Dangote Small-Scale Businesses Development Fund.
Other available funds include N100 billion Cotton, Textile and Garment (CTG) Fund, National Automotive Council (NAC) Fund, NFRA Rice Processing Intervention Fund, Cement Fund.
He added that the Cottage Industries Fund and Small-Scale Processing Fund and National Sugar Development Fund were also available.
Providing the breakdown of the N870.44 billion disbursed across the various sectors of the country’s economy within the years under review, he said while the agro-business benefited N53.3 billion, the entertainment sector gulped N337.60 million. Other sectors include aviation N181 billion, textile N50.39 billion, rice N2.8 billion, NAC fund N9.74 billion, cement N0.719 billion, and restructuring and refinancing fund N229.18 billion.
Dikwa also stated that the bank recorded increment in fund disbursement by five percent from N218.8 billion in 2011 to N229.18 billion in 2012, and that the number of beneficiaries also increased from 498 in 2011 to 534 in 2012.
According to him, BOI’s schemes have generated indirect employment with the cumulative turnover of the obligators increasing from N503.17 billion per annum before intervention, to N659.15 billion after. “Direct employment by beneficiaries increased from an average of 62,097 before intervention to 76, 581 after intervention, representing an increase of 23 per cent.”
He also said the total fund disbursed under the N300-billion Power and Aviation Fund (PAIF) increased by 23 per cent from N147 billion in 2011 to N181 billion in 2012.
He claimed that the beneficiaries under the PAIF scheme had been able to increase their investments in assets and revenue base as a result of lower obligations that they were given on the loan.
“The PAIF scheme has helped in promoting the development of long-term bank credits for infrastructure financing and institutional capacity building for financing power projects within the banking sector.”