The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that about N5.3 trillion out of N9.3 trillion lent out under its intervention funds portfolio is not yet due for repayment.
The apex regulator also said for now it has closed gates for the intervention funds, adding that as at Tuesday N3.7 trillion has been repaid under intervention funds.
Addressing financial journalists Thursday virtually, Director Development Finance: Mr. Yila Yusuf said ” a total of N5.3 trillion of the intervention funds was not yet due for repayment,” adding that most of funds are still under moratorium, especially the manufacturing sector which forms largest part of our portfolio over 31 per cent.”
He explained that in the last two to three years, we have moved from agriculture that used to be the biggest buyer of the lending to manufacturing.
He pointed out that the manufacturing loans are long term between five and 10 years.
On the monitoring of the funds, he “we have a robust monitoring and evaluation framework in place. We not only do that we carry out post implementation studies, for some of these interventions and we will begin to publish some of the results that we have seen in the fourth quarter both in agriculture and MSMEs. We have done a post COVID implementation study”.
He said that one of the CBN best performing interventions is a commercial agric credit scheme (CACS) of which the apex bank has lent around N800 billion and almost N700 billion has been repaid.
He said every single person who took that loan, smallholder farmer among other is going to pay back the loan at the end of the day, the CBN have their BVN. He explained that anyone that defaulted, the apex bank will use the global standing instructions to track them. ” we will continue to pull their accounts in the banks that they lend through, or whichever bank that they have accounts and anytime we see any fund we will recover that.,” he added.
Providing details of the disbursement under the intervention scheme, the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele said the Apex bank has released the sum of N66.99 billion to 12 additional projects in manufacturing and agriculture under the real sector facility.
Also speaking, Director Monetary Policy, Dr. Hassan Mahmud, said the CBN planned to mop up funds from the System by Thursday to curb inflation from the nation’s economy.
