The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has pledged to distribute between N250 billion and N300 billion to ameliorate the plight of Nigerians suffering from the scourge of COVID-19.
The COVID-19 relief pledge is an increase over the N149 billion the apex bank earlier distributed to 317,000 beneficiaries.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, disclosed on Tuesday in Abuja while addressing the media at the end of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting.
Emefiele explained that the relief fund was increased to accommodate other regions of the country not covered during the first phase.
He said, “You will recall in March at the onset of COVID-19, the CBN came out very quickly and put on the table the initiative that we believe will ameliorate and alleviate the pain of COVID-19 on our people.
“Firstly, we talked about how the banks should restructure their facilities; how interest rate should come lower particularly for CBN interventions and how repayment should be spread for those who are owing banks so they have some more rest even as their cash flow have been badly affected.”
He noted that the CBN also proposed to put on the table N50 billion for targeted credit facilities to household and small scale businesses deeply impacted by the COVID-19.
“These are all secured facilities made for people who we feel were impacted and just needed money either to start business or conduct some kind of consumption so as to help them live their lives during the period of the pandemic.
“We also put on the table N100 billion for healthcare industries, pharmaceutical and hospitals for their upgrade or building of new ones and made available also a facility of N1 trillion to cooperate bodies who are willing to expand in the manufacturing or agricultural sector.
“Let me say that till date, we have seen tremendous response on these initiatives and I must also say that these initiatives together with those that have come from fiscal have been responsible for the somewhat moderated impact on the COVID-19 on the lives of our people.”
The CBN governor added, “Till date, rather than even the N50 billion the CBN has disbursed through its institutions the sum of N149 billion to 317,000 beneficiaries. On Healthcare, around N600 million has been disbursed to 60 healthcare projects whether they are hospitals or pharmaceutical companies who are into healthcare and drug manufacturing.
“On the road sector, we have disbursed N350 billion to over 105 road sectors during this same period. For those going into small businesses like tailoring, hair making etc we have also disbursed over N92 billion to more than 27,000 people.
“For youths under the creative funding initiative, we have disbursed over N2.9 billion to our youths in the area of fashion, ICT, movie and music sector. Now that we have seen that this has been quite impactful, particularly the targeted credit facility which is made for househelp and SMEs because what we saw during this period is that it has helped to boost consumption spending for our SMEs and if you could recall that consumption constitutes over 70% of output, you will know that this has been very impactful in moderating impact of COVID-19 on productivity and output and GDP in our country.
“We have been advised by the MPC that given that this has been very impactful positively that the CBN should do more, we put 50 billion on the table we so far disbursed over 149 billion to 317,000 beneficiaries and we have been told that we have to increase it not just from 149 that it is now but to increase to almost about N250-300 billion to accommodate more people that have not accessed this facilities.
“But we do insist that this must be done in a way that it goes round because we found out that some zones are more represented than others but it’s understandable for instance in zones like the North Central where we have predominantly Abuja or South West where you have Lagos will certainly have a larger share but the important thing is that we want to use this opportunity to see what can be done to boost consumption spending for our people and also see to it that output is stimulated positively for the good of our people.”
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