CBN moves to strengthen SME growth, enhance access to financial services

In Nigeria, one of the greatest obstacles that Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) have to grapple with is access to funds. This is further compounded by the fact that even where credit facilities are available, they may not be able to muster the required collateral to access such.

This situation has led invariably to many of them closing shop, resulting in the loss of thousands of unskilled, semi and skilled jobs across the country.

This was why in 2005/2006, the National Micro Finance Policy launched by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo, with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as its implementing agency.

It marked the beginning of the guidelines for setting up Micro Finance Banks (MFBs the regulation of MFBs and so on.

Part of the component of that policy was the establishment of a fund to strengthen the link between entrepreneurship and access to financial services for MSMEs in the country.

This came to fruition last Thursday in Abuja, when a N220 billion fund was formally launched at the seventh annual MSMEs finance conference and D-8 workshop on micro-finance for SMEs by Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

The objectives of the new fund Sanusi revealed is to enhance the ability of the micro finance institutions to shape themselves into low interest, long term funding organisations that would provide financing window that would improve the capacity of the PFI to meet the credit need of the micro small and medium enterprise.

The ultimate responsibility for the successful intermediation of the financial sector, Sanusi said, lies in the financial market to integrate the  micro entrepreneurs, with low income earners, farmers, artisans into the financial system to improve the effectiveness of the polity.