80,000 Nigerians apply for CBN N50bn credit facility

Applications numbering over 80,000 have been received by the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) from individuals and businesses for the central bank’s N50 billion Targeted Credit Facility (TCF).

Abubakar Kure, NIRSAL’s managing director confirmed this at a news conference in Abuja Tuesday.

The apex bank had in March unveiled the relief package to support households and Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) severely affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

40,000 of the applicants requesting the credit were households while 30,000 were SMEs, the NIRSAL chief said, adding that disbursement would commence next week.

“The issue of business plan was a requirement for MSMEs applications as stipulated by CBN guideline.

“At the start of the process, business plans which NIRSAL received from loan applicants were highly substandard and to ensure high standard and efficient processing, an optional, automated business plan was provided by a service provider at a highly discounted fee.

“This is to avoid applicants being charged excessively by other consultants and to help people during the stay at home period and to make the application process easy. We got a third party service provider to enable applicants to access the business plan through the internet,” Mr Kure stated.