We now resume the series on banks’ loan and other financial services offer to SMEs, which we paused a few weeks ago to address some other small businesses financial intelligence issues.

The United States Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, yesterday, told African countries to be wary of Chinese government and its loan facilities.

In the past three months we have been discussing banks’ offers to small businesses in the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the area of business loans.

We are finally at the concluding part of the discussion on Diamond Bank loan packages for small business.

We are now on the third portion of this series on MSMEs’ getting business loans from banks in which we have focused on the offers from Stanbic IBTC Bank. We have discussed just one offer which is what they call SME Overdraft.

INTERNATIONAL Labour Organisation, ILO, has called on policy-makers to look into ways to make it easier for small and medium enterprises, SMEs, to access such external funding.

In the entire banking and finance sub sector, bad debt has been a big problem because the economy has been in recession for five quarters and businesses have been failing. Money has been very scarce especially with the tight monetary policy being implemented by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, in order to control inflation. When you look at tight monetary policy and recession, it can only mean that a lot of loans are going bad, not just in microfinance but it is a bank-wide phenomenon.

THE recent announcement by the Federal Minister of Finance of the government’s decision to refinance the country’s debt by borrowing dollars at seven per cent instead of locally at between 13 and 18.5 per cent would have been commendable if it was not just a mere paper exercise which would still not reduce the quantum of debt the country is owing. On paper it would reduce the cost of borrowing, but at maturity it would require the country to source for dollars to repay.

THE recent announcement by the Federal Minister of Finance of the government’s decision to refinance the country’s debt by borrowing dollars at seven per cent instead of locally at between 13 and 18.5 per cent would have been commendable if it was not just a mere paper exercise which would still not reduce the quantum of debt the country is owing. On paper it would reduce the cost of borrowing, but at maturity it would require the country to source for dollars to repay.

THE Bank of Industry (BoI) has disbursed over N450 million micro credit loans to more than 7,000 beneficiaries under the Federal Government’s Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) in Ogun State.

By Babajide Komolafe LAGOS— The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, yesterday, raised the limit on banks’ foreign currency loans, including Eurobonds, to 125 per cent of shareholders’ funds. This represents 66 per cent increase when compared with the 75 per cent limit introduced in 2014. The CBN also imposed a five-year limit on maturity on […]

THE Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) has so far approved up to N1.7 billion loans for 1,400 beneficiaries who are at different stages of fulfilling requirements for disbursement.

Please refer to last week’s publication (this column) on this topic which deals with basic documentations and requirements, the starting point to prepare before applying for a loan

GETTING a loan from banks in Nigeria is not as difficult as most people think, especially those that have issues attempting to do so. The problem is largely that of huge communication gap (knowledge gap) between the lender and the borrower, than unavailability of loanable funds or unwillingness of banks to lend. Also it is not all about borrowers’ shortcomings as has been overstretched in some quarters.