By the end of December 2022, the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) had given more than N631 billion to more than 313,000 MSMEs.
The amount is a little increase above the N482 billion distributed in 2021. It reveals a 31% increase in finance support and a 50% increase in MSMEs affected.
The managing director of the bank, Dr. Tony Okpanachi, stated during the bank’s annual general meeting in Abuja that of the overall recipients of DBN money over the course of five years, 67% were women and 27% were young people, with more than 250,000 employment already created.
Okpanachi said the bank has continued to investigate various possibilities to remove barriers to MSMEs accessing funding and that this places a significant emphasis on the role of scaling up capacity building for MSMEs. Okpanachi acknowledged challenges MSMEs face in assessing loan prospects.
He claims that the DBN established a new collaboration with Google Nigeria, a learning management system, and other organizations through which MSMEs can enrol in entrepreneurship courses for the required upskilling.
Regarding the Bank’s performance over the course of the year, he claimed that it made N29.5 billion in profit before taxes on earnings of N47.6 billion. It had a cost to income ratio of 15.9%.
Women-dominated industries including trade and commerce were among the top sectors that DBN funded by the end of 2022, which aids the bank in bolstering its support for MSME.
“While the average tenor of MSME loans in the bank’s books used to be 18 months, it has increased to 36 months due to the impact of the long-term facility. By the end of 2022, utilisation of the long-term product was N150 billion. In addition, the bank is now able to extend its impact to start-ups by leveraging the finance-to-finance product. The 2022 financial year ended with N5 billion already channelled through the product,” he confirmed.
