The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has blamed the failure of its Enterprise Development Centres (EDCs) scheme on the high rate of drop out of trainees.

The CBN Governor, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, made the observation in a statement made available to journalists in Lagos. Sanusi said that the trainees were encountering difficulties in accessing credit in spite of their high expectations to establish their businesses at the end of the training.

“One of the challenges militating against the success of the CBN-EDC scheme is the high attrition rate among the EDC trainees. This was due to the fact that their aspirations and high expectations of accessing credit to establish their businesses at the end of the training have not been met. It is evident that out of over 20,000 graduates of the EDC Scheme, barely two per cent have been able to access credit from the financial institutions,” Sanusi said.

According to him, the same trend is replicated among graduates of other enterprise development schemes. Sanusi said that CBN initially planned to establish the EDC in the six geo-political zones of the country.“So far, three EDCs have been established in Onitsha (South-East), Kano (North-West) and Lagos (South-West),” he said.

Sanusi said that the CBN entrepreneurship development programme was targeted at persons with a minimum of secondary education. He said the scheme provided insights into all functional areas of business enterprise, including production, marketing, personnel and finance.

“It also includes raising new class of entrepreneurs who can compete globally and provide the bridge for future industrialisation of the country,” he said.