Nigeria’s Development Bank finances 35,000 MSMEs in first year of operations

The Development Bank of Nigeria has signed on at least 35,000 Micro Small and Medium Enterprises in its first year of operation, signaling an increase of 75 per cent increase over its announced projection of 20,000 MSMEs for the year.

The Federal Government had created DBN to provide structured and sustainable financing to small businesses.

The bank commenced formal lending activities in October 2017.

The financing to MSMEs also underscores the significant progress which the institution is making to stimulate that segment of the economy.

The DBN’s Managing Director, Tony Okpanachi, had in July predicted a spike in the number of MSMEs signing up towards year-end.

He said, “DBN has granted loans to about 10,000 small businesses this year, or half its target. We are going to see more up-tick from this July as the newly signed-up lenders bring their pipeline to us.”

The achievement is coming on the heels of DBN’s recent induction into SME finance forum.

The SME finance forum is a global membership network that brings together financial institutions, technology companies, and development finance institutions to share knowledge, spur innovation, and promote the growth of SMEs.

The focus of the network of 140 members is to collaborate on catalysing and expanding access to finance for MSMEs.

It is expected that the opportunities for networking and strategic partnerships afforded by the forum will boost the bank’s capacity to deliver on its mandate in terms of knowledge, capacity and best practice

The milestone reinforces other positives that have been notched up by the institution.

One of these is the planned establishment of a subsidiary which will be responsible for providing partial credit guarantees to lenders.

The plan is to provide 50 per cent guarantees for all credit disbursed through DBN and the funding will be increased as the unit takes on more portfolios.