BoI empowers four million SMEs in 5years
The Bank of Industry (BOI) has provided financial assistance for more than four million companies in the last five years. These include Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) that needed to expand, diversify and or modernise existing investments. BOI achieved this through its Growth Platform which is aimed at unlocking productivity and rolling back poverty. This was disclosed by the Managing Director of the Bank, Olukayode Pitan, at the official launch of ‘Aid for Productivity’, a report that chronicles the bank’s Growth Platform achievements.
The report was unveiled by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who attributed the successes of the Bank to the effective use of technology as well as the social network programmes put in place by the Federal Government.
The VP said: “Growth Platform has been a powerful generator of opportunities for young entrepreneurs. People aged 18 to 35 make up 57 percent of Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programmme (GEEP)’s beneficiaries. The programme has also tackled the problem of women’s financial exclusion head-on, and today, the majority of its beneficiaries are female.
“Through GEEP alone, BOI has disbursed capital to over one million women-led MSMEs and helped over 150,000 of them to open bank accounts for the first time.”
Pitan said that the platform is Africa’s largest executor of MSMEs’ business interventions, employing technology, big data with an extensive field agent network to deliver programmes targeted at MSMEs.
According to him, the report surveys the achievements and insights into the programme’s revolutionary future potentials.
He said: “The good thing about the Growth Platform is that it digitises millions of MSMEs and provides tranches of capital to them. This enables them (MSMEs) to raise their productivity and incomes, strengthen their sustainability and contribute to job creation and economic development. The focus of the Growth Platform is a fundamental shift from aid for survival to aid for productivity.
“Growth Platform offers a seamless process, technology, and field infrastructure for funds delivery to MSMEs, with the power of biometrics, BVN as digital collateral, mobile data, mobile wallets, and strong network. Growth Platform can properly target, document, profile and deliver social interventions to MSMEs at a large scale.”
He stressed that BOI is ambitious in onboarding 25 million MSMEs by 2025.
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