Nigeria’s apex bank set to open more business opportunities with collateral registry

Nigeria’s central bank said it is opening more business opportunities in the country through the National Collateral Registry (NCR).

Isaac Okorafor, the bank’s acting Director, Corporate Communications, in a statement Monday said that soon the NCR would move to the next phase of its mandate of easing business practices in Nigeria.

Okorafor, according to NAN, said this in Abuja, explaining that the efforts put into strengthening the NCR by the CBN were a fall out of the recent World Bank report, which indicated Nigeria’s meteoric rise in the “Ease of Doing Business Index”.

The index had rated Nigeria 145th from a previous position of 169th, out of 190 countries.

According to Okorafor, the apex bank would do all within its mandate to strengthen the NCR in order to improve Nigeria’s present ranking of 6th on the “Getting Access to Credit” index.

On the role of the bank in ensuring a robust financial sector, he said the reduction of information asymmetry had assisted lenders in making sound decisions on credit solutions, also improving access to credit by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

Since its inception in 2016, the NCR has acted as a catalyst to credit improvement by significantly improving the credit culture in the Nigerian banking system.

The NCR equally made it possible for MSMEs to leverage the significant portion of their moveable assets as collateral for loans from the financial institutions to grow their businesses.

The activities of the NCR have proved effective in complementing the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP) initiative of the bank for job creation and food sufficiency.