100 entrepreneurs get N144m loan from CBN

No fewer than 100 owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the South West have so far accessed over N144 million as loans from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Olumide Ajayi, programmes director of the CBN-Entrepreneurship Development Centre (EDC) initiative, Southwest zone, who disclosed this at the graduation ceremony of 500 trainees of the centre in Ibadan, said from the inception of the second phase of the project in March 2015, it has trained 3,649 SMEs till date, Ajayi said 2,213 SMEs had been trained in 2016 alone, including start-ups and existing entrepreneurs.

According to Ajayi, among those that were trained this year alone, more than half had submitted their business plans, 22 start-ups had commenced business while 732 businesses were expanded. He said about 490 new jobs had been created from them.

“Today, about 500 trainees of the centre are graduating, having met the condition of attending minimum 70 percent class attendance, passing their post-training assessment, submission of business plans and obtained clearance for graduation,” he said.

“What do these figures show us? First, it shows us considerable improvement from what we achieved last year. We have performed 140 percent better in terms of enrolment and training; and we also improved considerably in terms of internship and access to funding for start-ups and existing businesses. These figures also tell us that there is more ground to cover in the Southwest States,” he added.

The centre, he pointed out, had partnered both private and public institutions to provide entrepreneurship training in their respective communities.

“ It is important to state here that the State of Osun is, so far, the only state that has provided state sponsored trainees to the EDC for training. The state provided us with 196 persons who underwent entrepreneurship training in Oshogbo and more than percent have submitted their business plans,” he said. He therefore called  on the state governments of Oyo, Ekiti, Ogun, Lagos and Ondo to replicate the same initiatives in their respective states.

He disclosed that Oyo State government, under the leadership of Abiola Ajimobi, facilitated N120 million as business loans to 100 trainees of the centre who were both indigenes of the state and had their businesses domiciled in the state.

“More than half of these trainees have accessed this fund and have started paying back to the bank, which, we believe, will create opportunity for other trainees to access the fund,” he said.

He stated that the centre’s vocational training programme, in partnership with Oodu’a Investment Company Limited and the Oyo State Government, focused on carefully selected trade lines with higher multiplier effects in terms of employment and income generation.

In his address, Femi Adebiyi, training and business manager of the centre, said the centre had been able to change the orientation of participants in regards to acquiring entrepreneurial skills.