Founder and Chief Executive Officer of H. Pierson Associates Limited, Eileen Shaiyen has identified seven critical high-impact areas that Nigeria must focus on to achieve true economic development. She made this known at the recent annual lecture of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) where she was a panelist.
Joining other stakeholders in the finance sector to discuss the theme ‘Of Banks and Bankers: Finance and the Challenge of Economic Development in Nigeria’ as delivered in the lecture by the former deputy governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and presidential aspirant Kingsley Moghalu, Shaiyen argued that a large population of Nigerians reside in the rural areas according to the statistics presented by the speaker. Thus, a large chunk of the labour force is employed by the Micro, Small and Medium-size enterprises (MSMEs).
“MSMEs contribute probably about 90 percent to employment and 50 percent to GDP. With these statistics, how can we make great impact towards achieving economic development? For us to achieve this, we have to look at the MSMEs because of the wide role they have and the fact that we need to cover the majority of over 200 million people who are not living in Lagos.”
She further emphasised on the other impact areas which include strong consumer lending, funding to health, education, agriculture value chain, as well as women and exports.
According to her, the major type of funds needed by these high-impact areas for economic development is ‘patient money’ which largely includes low-cost revolving credit and then capital, both of which should be readily available on a wide-scale, especially in the hinterlands. While recognizing the role of commercial and merchant banks in the country, Shaiyen however expressed doubt that they can deliver effectively on the mentioned areas. “We need a change of positioning in which microfinance banks and similar grass-root focused and capital-providing entities, begin to take the front row in our funding and financial sector discourse and strategies,” she stated.
Using India as a case study, she pointed out that the Asian country has 93,550 rural cooperative banks, 1,589 urban cooperative banks, several cooperative credit institutions and 56 regional rural banks in additions to its regular commercial and foreign banks
“Most importantly, the financial ecosystem in India, significantly elevates these grassroots financial institutions to a position of primary and strategic focus and impact assurance and not as ‘third cousins’ to the commercial banks.”
Although she lauded the Bankers body for their choice of topic for the conference, she however challenged them to deploy their platform to change the narrative and focus towards these institutions that are critically needed for change in the listed areas. She also tasked the CIBN to deploy its research and advocacy facilities to develop an index to track the impact of the various categories of banks on economic development.
“The goal will be to push more support and appropriate positioning towards providers of widespread, rurally accessed patient money.”
Also speaking at the event, Chairman, Nigerian Economic Summit Group, Kyari A. Bukar who also chaired the lecture, emphasised on the need to give more support to funding sources for start-ups such as Venture Capital Funds and Angel Investors.
Other panelists who made major contributions at the lecture include Consul General, Federal Republic of Germany, Mr. Ingo Herbert; MD/CEO Cowry Assets Management, Mr. Johnson Chukwu; MD/CEO Infrastructure Bank, Kunle Oyeloye; MD/CEO Nova Merchant Bank Chinedu Ikwudinma; and Advisory Partner/Chief Economist, PWC Nigeria, Dr. Andrew Nevin.
