BY BAMIDELE FAMOOFO
The Development Bank of Nigeria says it has completed all arrangements to boost the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises through a capacity building exercise, which is one of its core mandates, as well as providing access to finance to MSMEs and partial credit guarantee to the participating financial institution on a market conforming basis to enable them to lend to small businesses.
Specifically, the development finance institution said it is committed to building the capacity of the Nigerian MSMEs to enable them to formalize, grow and become more bankable to get easy access to available credit.
Commenting on the initiative, the DBN Managing Director/CEO, Tony Okpanachi, said part of DBN’s role is to partner with financial institutions and collaborate with them to provide financing facilities to MSMEs.
In many cases, DBN also offers technical assistance programmes to these institutions to augment their capacity to lend to MSMEs.
According to Okpanachi, “In the short term, we plan to strengthen our catalytic role in the Nigerian economy by expanding our reach to more MSMEs in underserved regions such as crisis-impacted areas and enhancing development impact in other key areas such as women- and youth-owned enterprises, startups, and first-time borrowers.
“We will continue to provide capacity building for MSMEs and technical assistance to our participating financial institutions to strengthen their lending capacity to MSMEs.
“In the medium term, we plan to complete the digital transformation efforts currently underway within the Bank and expand our channels of disbursement to MSMEs, which speaks to our drive for increased collaboration with other players within the space.
“In the long term, our focus is for DBN to be recognized locally and internationally as the foremost institution driving the growth and sustainability of the Nigerian economy through the provision of financing support to MSMEs.”
Whilst explaining the structured Entrepreneurship Training to the executive members of the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria who paid a courtesy visit to the Bank’s Lagos office, the Head, Corporate Services DBN, Idris Salihu said the Bank would be deploying the DBN Learning Management System, a free learning portal with carefully curated self-paced courses.
The portal is open to all Nigerian MSMEs who are interested in acquiring the right knowledge needed to succeed in doing business in Nigeria.
In addition, Salihu stated, that DBN will be selecting the best 200 businesses to attend face-to-face training in Lagos and Abuja.
