Business 2016: CBN Prioritizes Fresh Nigerian Graduates Over Corporate Bodies

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The Central Bank of Nigeria is planning to give employment to one million Nigerian graduates in 2016 by offering soft loans to them.

“In the course of the next few weeks, we will be unfolding a plan of support of the CBN to create employment for at least one million young graduates in Nigeria in 2016. That will entail support from Nigerian banks and our development institutions to see how we will channel these concessionary loans to companies that are MSMEs," CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, said at the opening ceremony of the seventh Annual Bankers’ Committee Retreat.

“We are entering a phase where we believe that the SMEs must be the only priority for growth in our economy. I must say that the Nigerian banking sector has not played an active part in supporting the SMEs, but this is not without reasons. We had issues in the past where people took loans and didn’t pay.

“The SMEs are seen as drivers of growth in any economy. Nigeria has 37 MSMEs. The CBN has a N220bn MSME facility. We have used various approaches to stimulate lending to the SMEs through that fund and I must confess that we are not doing enough on that because less than half of that fund has been disbursed today.”

“Let’s give the young graduates a chance. The SME programme is going to be separate from the N220bn MSME fund, and I am saying if you (the banks) refuse to support, your money that we would have released through the Cash Reserve Ratio, we will take that money and lend it through any channel that will give these young graduates jobs.

“We all need to think together and agree because there is no need to release the money to you and all you do with the money is buy treasury bills. It can’t continue. We need to think about the best ways to diversify this economy away from oil,” he said.
 

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