By Emeka Ezekiel, Abuja

Tuesday, 2 Nov 2010

The Nigerian Export Import Bank has invested N66bn to finance projects in the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises sub- sector in Nigeria within the last 19 years.

The Managing Director / Chief Executive Officer , NEXIM Bank, Mr.Roberts Oriya, disclosed this in Abuja on Monday.

NEXIM was established by Act 38 of 1991 as an Export Credit Agency with a share capital of N50bn held equally by the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The bank ,which replaced the Nigerian Export Credit Guarantee & Insurance Corporation earlier established under Act 15 of 1988, provides short and medium term loans to Nigerian exporters.

Specifically, Oriya said that the N66bn was spent in financing start-up projects in the manufacturing, mining, agro-processing and services sectors.

He said that out of the N66bn, N28.5bn, representing 43 per cent was disbursed to the manufacturing sector while N25bn, representing 36 per cent, was spent on agro-processing.

Orya also added that services and mining sectors got N5bn and N3bn, representing 10 and five per cent of total disbursement respectively.

He said that the bank was currently focusing on SMEs owing to their potential in generating employment as well as facilitating economic growth and development.

According to Orya, “We are paying more attention to the funding of SMEs because of their great potential in terms of generating employment and also as the driver of economic growth and development.

“Currently, SMEs are facing so many challenges in Nigeria .Although most SME owners have great ideas, most of them can’t translate these ideas into bankable projects. In addition to this, they have difficulty in terms of having easy access to funding.

“Our focus is to assist them in the area of building capacity and having easy access to finance . As part of this, we have set up an internal financial advisory services department to enable SMEs model their proposals to meet the requirements of banks and investors.

He added, “ We have set up an export house to assist SMEs to coordinate their export activities in line with international standards. In order to ensure the successful implementation of this programme, we have set up mechanisms for monitoring their activities in terms of how they will be able to increase production as well as ensuring that foreign proceeds are repatriated.”

He further said that the bank was holding consultations with relevant government agencies to provide financial and advisory services to small- scale miners.

He said, “The mining sector holds great potentials for Nigeria. However, the activities of illegal miners have hampered the development of this very important sector”.

We have sign a Memorandum of Understanding with some state investment companies with a view to addressing the problem of illegal mining and provide finance for SMEs in this sector.”

Source: Punch