- DBN Lends to All Sectors, Says MD
The Managing Director, Development Bank of Nigeria, Tony Okpanachi, has said that the bank was established to provide funds for different legitimate businesses in all the sectors of the economy.
According to a statement made available to our correspondent on Tuesday, Okpanachi said this while explaining the differences between the bank and other industry lenders.
Okpanachi said, “DBN provides loans for legitimate businesses in all sectors of the economy as a wholesale DFI, which is what distinguishes the bank from the other lending banks.”
According to him, while most of the institutions focus on specific sectors or areas, DBN focuses on the whole gamut of the MSMEs space
With a lot of financial hitches facing MSMEs in Nigeria despite the growing number of lenders in the country, he said that the DBN tried to bridge the gap by opening its loan range to cover businesses in all sectors.
He explained that the bank’s funding model was to do all its financing through retail financial institutions that had existing relationships with the MSMEs.
The DBN boss noted that bank’s loans came at lower interest rates compared to other commercial lenders, with an 18-month moratorium before the end borrowers could begin to service the loan, and a longer loan repayment period of up to 10 years.
Okpanachi also said that the capital intensive power sector was not left out of DBN lending.
He said the DBN would give loans to small and medium scale distributors or manufacturers in the power sector if their application was within the limit of DBN mandate.
As of December 2018, the statement said, the DBN reached 35,000 end-borrowers with loan disbursement of N35bn.
This figure, according to Okpanachi, had already been surpassed in the first quarter of 2019.
He recalled that the DBN recently collaborated with GTBank to disburse N25bn to MSMEs in Nigeria.
The bank also disclosed plans to empower MSMEs with N100bn before the end of 2019.