The Central Bank of Nigeria has reserved 60 per cent of its N220bn Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund for women entrepreneurs.
The apex bank added that two per cent of the fund would be given to economically active persons that are living with disabilities, as 10 per cent is meant for start-up businesses.
It disclosed this in the MSMEDF guidelines for non-interest financial institutions.
The Federal Government had last month announced that it would roll out palliatives to assist women-owned MSMEs recover from the impact of the Coronavirus Disease.
Minister of Women Affairs, Mrs. Pauline Tallen, explained that the national survey on the impact of COVID-19 on women-owned businesses in Nigeria captured trends and patterns of the losses caused by the pandemic on women-owned businesses, and would guide the government’s move to revive the affected businesses.
She said, “The impact of the pandemic on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises has been quite massive, and resulted in unforeseen losses for business owners.”
However, the sub-sector is characterised by huge financing gap, which hinders the development of MSMEs.
“Section 6.10 of the Revised Microfinance Policy, Regulatory and Supervisory Framework for Nigeria stipulates that ‘a Microfinance Development Fund shall be set up, primarily to provide for the wholesale funding requirements of Microfinance Banks/Microfinance Institutions.’
“To fulfil the provisions of Section 4.2 (iv) of the policy, which stipulates that women’s access to financial services should increase by at least 15 per cent yearly to eliminate gender disparity, 60 per cent of the fund has been earmarked for providing financial services to women.”
It added that this informed the decision of the CBN to establish the MSMEDF, which has a take-off seed capital of N220bn.
The fund prescribes 50:50 ratio for on-financing to micro enterprises and SMEs by Participating Financial Institutions.
The commercial component will constitute 90 per cent of the fund, which is to be disbursed in the form of wholesale funding to the PFIs.
