The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has disbursed over N2.46 trillion to beneficiaries of its sundry intervention programmes in the past few years, with agricultural, manufacturing and health sectors accounting for the largest chunk of the funding supports.
For instance, while the apex bank has disbursed a total of N756.51bn to over 3.7 million farmers under the Anchor Borrower’s Programme since the inception of the initiative in 2015, manufacturers had under its N1 trillion Real Sector Facility received N923.41bn for real sector projects. This is apart from the N318.17bn disbursements to Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) under the bank’s Targeted Credit Facility.
In the health sector, the CBN has also disbursed over N300 billion to beneficiaries under its various intervention initiatives in the sector. Specifically, under the bank’s N100bn Healthcare Sector Intervention Facility, N98.41bn had been disbursed for various projects while the sum of N232.54m was disbursed to five beneficiaries under the CBN Healthcare Sector Research and Development Intervention (Grant) Scheme.
These figures were sourced by our correspondent from the communiqué No 137 issued by the apex bank at the end of its 2-day Monetary Policy Committee meeting ended Tuesday in Abuja.
The communiqué indicated that under the bank’s development finance initiatives, N756.51bn had been granted to 3,734,938 smallholder farmers cultivating 4.6 million hectares of land, of which N120.24bn was extended for the 2021 wet season to 627,051 farmers for 847,484 hectares of land, under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme.
According to the document, so far the sum of N121.57bn has been disbursed to 32,617 beneficiaries under its Agribusiness, Small and Medium Enterprise Investment Scheme, an initiative introduced in February 2017 by the MPC.
This is even as the communiqué indicated that as of May 2021, about 109,879 SMEs had benefited from its Targeted Credit Facility and National Youth Investment Fund schemes.
The communiqué further expatiated on the disbursements: “For the Targeted Credit Facility, N318.17bn was released to 679,422 beneficiaries, comprising 572,189 households and 107,233 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises.
“Under the National Youth Investment Fund, the bank released N3bn to 7,057 beneficiaries, of which 4,411 were individuals and 2,646 SMEs”, it added.
The document listed other sectors that had benefited from the bank’s facilities and initiatives as including health, information and communication technology and film.
According to the CBN, under the Creative Industry Financing Initiative, N3.22bn was disbursed to companies classified as confidential beneficiaries across movie production, movie distribution, software development, fashion, and IT verticals.
It also disclosed that under the N1tn Real Sector Facility, the bank released N923.41bn to 251 real sector projects, of which 87 were in light manufacturing, 40 in agro-based industry, 32 in services and 11 in mining.
On the N100bn Healthcare Sector Intervention Facility, CBN stated that N98.41bn was disbursed for 103 health care projects, of which 26 are pharmaceuticals and 77 are in the hospital services.
The apex bank also confirmed that the sum of N232.54m was disbursed to five beneficiaries under the CBN Healthcare Sector Research and Development Intervention (Grant) Scheme for the development of testing kits and devices for COVID-19 and Lassa fever treatment nationwide.
