United Bank for Af¬rica Plc (UBA) has extended $700 mil¬lion (N113 billion) in funding to different investors towards the acquisition of power assets in Nigeria’s re¬cently privatised power sector.
Phillips Oduoza, group managing director and chief executive officer (GMD/CEO), UBA Plc, said this while speaking on the side-lines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Swit¬zerland, last week.
“It is a growth sector we are playing very big”, said Oduoza. Besides power, he said UBA is also heavily involved in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector where the bank has taken part in most of the major big ticket transactions.
On agriculture, the UBA chief executive said the bank has continued to channel resources to the sector, given that it remains the mainstay of most economies in Africa.
“UBA has a deliberate policy to continue to fund agriculture. Our lending to the sector is already above the industry average. We are doing about 7 percent of our total portfolio in agriculture”.
He commended the fact that lending to agriculture is generally on the upward trend from Nigerian banks, disclosing that banking sec-tor funding to agriculture has moved from just about 0.5 percent of total industry portfolio prior to 2009 to about 4.9 percent of banking industry loan book currently.
“Interestingly, the non-performing loans coming from agriculture lending is lower than most people would have thought.”
