‘Why women can’t access CBN’s N220bn MSMEs funds’

The high interest rate being charged has prevented a lot of prospective women from benefiting from the much publicised Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) N220 billion funds provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The funds are being given to small business holders for a minimum of 9% to 25% credit rate.
Giving an insight on the modus operandi on Tuesday, the Director, Women and Gender Affairs, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Esther Eghobamien, at the launch of a report on: “Economic Empowerment of African Women through Equitable Participation in Agricultural Value Chains” carried out by the office of the Special Envoy on Gender (SEOG) and the Department for Agriculture and Agro-industry (OSAN) said: “The reality is that there are a number of critical issues that is preventing women from accessing it. Issues about documentation, the kind of document that you require to meet banking requirements, women do not have it.”
According to her, “Financial literacy skills. How to develop good business plan, how to manage their businesses, to start up, to scale up and to expand. These are challenges that confront women. They do not have the knowledge to do it.
“Then the credit rate. The finances that are available, that has been released by the CBN to the commercial banks, they are being given at the minimum of 9%, between 9% to 25%.

Read also: Govt offers interest-free loans to SMEs

“It is unaffordable for women. They cannot afford to repay those loans if they take them at that rate. So they are not able to approach the commercial banks to access the loan. We need to have finances that are very single loan digits that women can be able to afford to pay based on their agricultural production and the profit they make on their markets.”
The ministry, she hinted, is working with the CBN, African Development Bank and other financial institutions to make the funds available to women.
“We are going into consultation with the Central Bank. We have a model of how we can access that money and use our existing structures and network to disburse it and provide business development services for women to ensure that they have the right finance literacy level and they have the enterprise management skills.
“When they start up they need to manage those enterprises to see that they can be competitive, make their profits and they can scale up and can be sustainable”, she stated .

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