By Simon Ebegbulem
BENIN—THE Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mr Godwin Emefiele, has said that if the country must witness accelerated development and become one of the top 20 economies in the world, it must take the micro- finance initiative, which seeks to integrate the poor and the economically active low income households into the national financial system seriously.

He said that this will also be critical to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals which, according to him, would have very serious impact on the rural populace in terms of reducing poverty, generating employment, providing access to health care, education and improve living conditions.

The CBN boss, yesterday in Benin City, Edo State, at the 2015 LAPO Institute Annual Conference on Micro-Finance and Enterprise Development, said: “The result of lack of access to finance, in addition to other factors, is pervasive poverty which needs to be addressed through identified programmes such as microfinance,” adding that the challenge is “how to integrate the low income people, especially the most vulnerable groups, into the financial system.”

He said: “In order to deepen access to finance by the most vulnerable groups in the society, CBN, in August 2013, launched the N220 billion Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund and commenced disbursement in August 2014. A minimum of 60 per cent of the fund is committed to financing women entrepreneurs because of their peculiar exclusion challenges.

“We must see microfinance as a viable tool which has positive impact on inclusive finance, social inclusion and serves as an important policy tool for policy makers.”

To ensure the sustainability of the microfinance, the CBN had been holding capacity building programmes to enable managers of the MFB’s and their staff to acquire skills for microfinance banking.”

Commending LAPO Institute for collaborating with CBN in the fight against poverty, he added that “Building a strong and viable microfinance sector on a sustainable basis is important to our attainment of inclusive growth and development which is a collective responsibility of all stakeholders.”