The Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) has pledged to eliminate financing constraints bedevilling Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
A statement from the bank in Abuja yesterday attributed this to its Managing Director, Tony Okpanachi.
According to Okpanachi, “DBN will continue to work towards building the capacity of MSMEs, eliminating the financing constraints faced by this sector of the economy and transforming them into instruments of positive and sustained change.”
The DBN boss noted: “It has become imperative for us to pull resources together and channel collaborative efforts towards building the capacity of MSMSEs as a way of revitalising their operations to address the challenge of access to finance.”
This, he said, would guarantee their growth and boost the economic potential of this critical sub-sector.
Quoting the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, Okpanachi said: “Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria have contributed about 48 per cent of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the last five years.
“With a total of about 17.4 million, they account for about 50 per cent of industrial jobs and nearly 90 per cent of the manufacturing sector.”