BARBARA BAKO, Abuja.
The Managing Director, Jaiz Bank Plc, Hassan Usman has said that Small and Medium Entrepreneurs that have been shortlisted would soon be receiving disbursement of $20m facility from the bank.
He said this on Thursday in Abuja while chatting with journalists. The fund disbursement would be concluded before the end of the year, according to Usman who spoke with journalists at Abuja on Thursday.
He said, “On the SME financing line from the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD), you start to do the work when you signed in publicly and tidy up to make sure the agreement and all the conditions precedent are met”
“We have finished all of that and we have lined up a number of customers desirous of benefiting from this facility and very soon we will start to disburse to these customers. “We believe that before the end of this year, we would have been done if not all of the disbursement of the $20m but substantial part would have gone before the end of this year.
” He said the bank had begun a five-year strategic plan to provide better services to its customers and which has started with its increased visibility in Lagos by opening more branches which would be extended to other regions of the country. He said, “We are having a balance sheet size that is growing by 20 percent year-on-year and our branch network has increased from 27 to 32 and we hope to increase this to 40 branches before the end of the year.”
As regards to funding for agriculture, he said that the Central Bank of Nigeria had reviewed it’s framework of the commercial agricultural credit scheme to accommodate the funding structure of the bank. He said, “The Central Bank and the Federal Government has been trying to ensure that financing get to the farmers.
To address the challenges, they came up with the Anchor Borrower Scheme and a similar scheme. “We are also now going to be participating in the commercial Agric scheme of the central bank because they have now fine-tuned the scheme to accommodate our type of financing structure. “Hitherto, we were not able to access it because it was on interest-based but it has been modified and we have a number of customers that will benefit from that.”
Comments are closed.