The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, says it has disbursed N803.36 billion out of the N1 trillion stimulus fund to support manufacturers and cushion their businesses from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This represents 80 per cent of the fund according to the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, who made this known during a press briefing at the end of the Monetary Policy Council, MPC, Meeting on Tuesday.
He said, “Under the N1.0 trillion Manufacturing Intervention Stimulus, the total of N803.36 billion has been disbursed to 228 projects across various sectors in agro-allied, mining, steel production and packaging industries, amongst others.”
This is in spite of complaints by manufacturers that they hardly have access to many intervention funds set up by the Bank.
The Director-General of the Manufactures Association of Nigeria, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, had last month said that feedbacks from its members and interaction with the CBN on several occasions showed that credit facilities and funds had not been adequately accessible to manufacturers.
He attributed this to the prevarication of the participating financial institutions (PFIs) and deposit money banks (DMBs).”
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Specifically, the DG said the CBN’s N1 trillion COVID-19 Stimulus for Manufacturing and Import Substitution, which commenced in 2020, had only been accessed by 76 companies, which received N300 billion, representing 30 percent of its members.
Also, the CBN Governor said under the Targeted Credit Facility, the apex bank had disbursed N218.16 billion to 475,376 beneficiaries, out of which 34 per cent of beneficiaries are SMEs.
Emefiele added that under AGSMEIS, N111.62 billion has been disbursed to 28,961 beneficiaries, with 70 percent of the beneficiaries doing business in the agricultural sector.
According to him, N3.19 billion has been disbursed to 341 beneficiaries of the Creative Industry Financing Initiatives mainly targeted at youths, out of which 53 percent works in the movie industry.
“Under the N100 billion Health Care intervention Fund, the bank has disbursed N94.34 billion, and is willing to expand the facility, to 85 projects in the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals and State governments for both brown field and green field projects, mostly to expand pharmaceutical drug lines, acquire six Classified Confidential MRI and other equipment and upgrade laboratories and other hospital services,” the CBN governor added.
To improve food supply in the country, Emefiele said ₦107.60 billion had been to 548,109 farmers cultivating 703,619 hectares of land between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021 to boost dry season output in support of agricultural value chain development.
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He stated that the total disbursements as of the end February 2021 amounted to ₦1.49 trillion under the various agricultural programmes, out of which N686.59 billion was disbursed under the Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme (CACS) and ₦601.75 billion under the Anchor Borrowers Programmes (ABP) to 3,038,649 farmers to support food supply and dampen inflationary pressures.
Under the National Mass Metering Programme, he said nine distribution companies received N33.45 billion for the procurement of 605,852 meters.
He added that N89.89 billion had been disbursed under the Nigeria Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility (NEMSF 2) to 11 distribution companies to improve the electricity supply industry in Nigeria.
