Mr. Godwin Emefiele, Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria announced on Thursday that a low-interest loan scheme for one million young graduates would commence next year.
Emefiele said the special loan scheme, which would be managed by the central bank in collaboration with commercial banks, was part of the strategy of the Federal Government to boost the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises sub-sector and curtail unemployment among the youth.
Emefiele made the disclosure in Lagos during the opening ceremony of the seventh Annual Bankers’ Committee Retreat.
The CBN governor said, “We need to get more and more people to be employed, and we will need the support of the banks to begin to see how we lower our risk acceptance criteria to give support to our young graduates.
“In the course of the next few weeks, we will be unfolding a plan of support of the CBN to create employment for at least one million young graduates in Nigeria in 2016. That will entail support from Nigerian banks and our development institutions to see how we will channel these concessionary loans to companies that are MSMEs.”
“Let’s give the young graduates a chance. The SME programme is going to be separate from the N220bn MSME fund, and I am saying if you (the banks) refuse to support, your money that we would have released through the Cash Reserve Ratio, we will take that money and lend it through any channel that will give these young graduates jobs.
“We all need to think together and agree because there is no need to release the money to you and all you do with the money is buy treasury bills. It can’t continue. We need to think about the best ways to diversify this economy away from oil.” he maintained.
No comments:
Post a Comment