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Central Bank of Nigeria has reiterated it’s Intention to revamp, reposition and re-engineer vital sectors of the economy particularly those the country has comparative advantage over others.
Speaking to Journalists in a 3 day sensitisation programme in Enugu, Isaac Okoroafor, the Acting Director of Corporate Communications said the CBN was in the state to create awareness, sensitise and explain the policies and
programmes of the CBN about the Nigerian economy.
“We are here to meet Nigerians to tell them about what we do and how they can benefit from what we are doing and also to ensure that they tell us what they want because they should be a feed back, we are here with farmers, artisans,welders, barbers, cottage industrialists, farmers and industrial attachment students, Online publisher, to interface with the real people, we have come to Enugu to really meet with the people, talk with them, it is no longer making announcement and press releases but we want them to talk to us. So that they will know what we do and how they can key into it to better their lives” Okorafor said.
According to him, the plan was to mobilise the low income, especially those women, youths, entrepreneurs and farmers who operate from the grassroot, because that is where the effect of recession was more.
He pointed out that CBN want to lift those people out of poverty and bring financial inclusion to them, include them into the global financial services so that they could work their way out of poverty.
Okoroafor said the main objective of the fair was to create awareness about the CBN’s activities as they concerned economic development initiatives, with a view to emphasising the available opportunities and how Nigerians
could take advantage of them.
“we have a whole lot of initiatives, we have the MSE development fund which is a N220 billion fund for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises. 60 percent of that fund is made for women and women owned entrepreneur, some states have access the fund, some have collected as much as One billion, Two billion and Retail to registered cooperative members in those states in bets, some states actually elected to pay the interest which is not more than 9 percent onbehalf of those beneficiaries and that is a lot of guarantee and some are recording a lot of success”. He said
The Apex bank he said also have commercial credit Agric scheme for large commercial farmers and agric credit scheme geared towards youth empowerment with special focus on members of the National Youth Service Corps. Where the youth corps members are allowed to access as much as N3million with their degree or HND certificate as
collateral.
He was optimistic that Nigeria would soon become exporter of rice going by the increased harvest from the programme the CBN embarked upon with rice farmers in various states of the federation. “For instance, 28 out of the 36 state can produce rice and with our anchor-borrower programme.if Kebi at a pilot stage can give us 1 million, Ebonyi is involved,Anambra state, Cross-River, Benue, Zamfara and so on, If our farmers can be given finance like we have done in Kebi state Nigeria will start exporting rice in two years time.
Regis Anukwuoji
