As a pledge to back the federal government in its plans and programmes for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises sector in the country, Access Bank Plc has pledged to disburse N30 billion funding to women and youth entrepreneurs in the form of soft loans.
Group Managing Director of the bank, Roosevelt Ogbonna made the disclosure while fielding questions from State House Correspondents, after he led the management of the bank on a visit to Vice President Kashim Shettima on Friday.
According to him: “Working with the office of the Vice President, we want to change the lives of small businesses belonging to women and youths. We do agree and determine that about 66 percent of MSMEs in Nigeria are owned by women and the youth.
“And I think one of the challenges that they face is finance. Therefore, working with the office of the Vice President; we have agreed today that Access Bank will provide about N30 billion towards supporting women and MSME’s and the youth.
“We will expect that this money will be done at discounted rate to commercial terms and we want to see how we can truly have a positive impact to this segment of the Nigerian economy. So we are excited to be part of that process and we thank the Vice President and his office for giving us this opportunity to be a partner,” he explained.
The Access Bank Group Managing Director further disclosed that the scheme would impact at least four million people, adding that the entire process would be kick started immediately as directed by Vice President Shettima.
“We are starting from today. We just have to look for the deserving MSMEs. We have been supporting SMEs and women for the last 16 to 17 years and all we are doing with this partnership is to give us significant impetus to do more.
Also speaking, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Medium and Small Scale Enterprises, Temitola Adekunle-Johnson, reiterated that Nigeria’s business environment is very condusive for businesses to thrive. He explained that the scheme will help strengthen partnership between the public and private sectors.
