BoI offers Aba manufacturers loan tips

The Bank of Industry (BoI) has offered tips to Aba-based manufacturers on ways to secure its facilities to expand their businesses.

BoI’s Acting Managing Director Mr. Waheed Olagunju coordinated the National Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise clinics for viable enterprises, organised by the Federal Government in collaboration with the Abia State Government.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo opened the event, which had various Federal Government agencies involved in economic development interacting with Aba traders with the aim of growing and supporting their businesses.

Olagunju noted that to easily access a loan, a business owner must imbibe some cardinal virtues, such as character, capacity, and commitment. He added that skills, requisite knowledge, and responsibility are needed to ensure that the person is committed to the business.

Identifying collateral as a major constraint to accessing loans by most businessmen, Olagunju noted that the government had taken steps to make businesses viable by providing relevant tips to break the barriers of difficulties faced by some in accessing loans.

“The first aim starts with marketing, how do manufacturers market their businesses? Hence the government has been coming up with procurement policies that are in favour of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs),” he said.

Noting that this had been done in other parts of the world, the BoI chief said: “We are evolving the same thing in Nigeria so that the government patronise MSMSEs so that what happened in the past do not happen again.”

Olagunju, however, said there was the need for Nigerians to change their taste for foreign goods and consume what they produce rather than consuming what they do not produce. He said now that Nigeria has foreign exchange crunch, the country is being forced to leave foreign goods the more.

Abia State Governor Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu expressed happiness that the Federal Government has finally recognised Aba as the hub of manufacturing not only in Nigeria but also in sub-Saharan Africa.

He enjoined Abia indigenes to freely interact with various government agencies at the two-day event, noting that it was held to make their doing business in the state easy.

On his part, Nigerian Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI) Director-General, Imo Anasonye, described the event as a welcome development, adding that it was a good start for the government’s diversification programme from the non-oil sector.

“What is happening here is a good thing in the sense that Nigeria wants to rebrand economically, diversifying from oil to the real sector, which is the productive sector.

“That the maiden edition of the MSMSE Clinic is happening in Aba is not by accident because Aba has been the cradle and home of craftsmanship in Africa. There is no product that can be made locally that is not made here”, Anasonye added.

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