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The Bank of Industry, BoI, said it has disbursed not less than N56.48 billion out of a total of N100 billion mapped out by the Federal Government as Cotton, Textiles and Garmenting Revival Fund to-date.
Presenting a paper, ‘Bridging the Gap between Manufacturing and the Bank of Industry’, in a forum with manufacturers in Lagos, the Managing Director, BoI, Ms Evelyn Oputu, represented by Mohammed Alkali, Executive Director, Operations, said the amount was used to fund 70 projects.
Giving a breakdown, she said that textiles industry was funded with the largest chunk totalling N38.66 billion, which was used to support 30 projects, while cotton/ginning followed with N10.62 billion, used as support fund for 14 projects. A total of 25 companies in garmenting sector were funded with N3.703 billion, while support and logistics gulped the remaining N3.5 billion.
She noted that in a whole, a total of two million jobs have been created through BoI’s various interventions, saying that they hope to double it by the end of this year.
Oputu noted that the support has seen an increased capacity utilisation of 60 percent in the sector, as against 30 percent when the fund was launched in 2009, while a total of 8,070 jobs were saved as a result. “Additional 3,472 jobs, comprising 2,197news jobs, 1,197 male and 1,027 female, were created, while 1,275 workers previously laid off were recalled. There has been improved industry employees’ welfare because of improved salaries and improved industry efficiency and competitiveness as a result,” she stated.
Speaking further, Oputu said that out of N236 billion set aside for refinancing and restructuring SMEs and the entire manufacturing sector, the BoI has disbursed N232 billion to over 550 beneficiaries through commercial banks cutting across all key sectors of the economy. Out of the N300 billion CBN’s power and aviation intervention fund, PAIF, a total of N221 billion has so far been disbursed with N104 billion used to fund power sector projects, while the remaining N117 billion was used to fund aviation sector projects.
According to him, the N18 billion NAC Fund, established in 2003 to fund automobile industry has been utilised in funding 33 projects, adding that BoI has successfully funded not less than 730 corporative societies with N3.9 billion.
Stressing the importance the bank attach to supporting the real sector, she said, “Today, we have risk assets portfolio of over N146 billion; 90 percent of the portfolio goes to the manufacturing sector, while the remaining 10 percent goes to the service sector.”
While listing paucity of structured funds as one of the problems of the manufacturing sector, the BoI boss explained that the bank is working towards having a structured funding for different industries, adding “We want to see if we can target SMEs in different sectors and prescribe different incentives for them.”
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