The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has promised to improve women’s access
to formal financial services especially credit through its various
intervention programmes.
This promise was made by the Director,
Development Finance Department of the CBN, Dr Mudashiru Olaitan
Wednesday in Abuja at the CBN 2018 International Women’s Day workshop
tagged “Women Inspiring Change”.
Represented by Mrs.
Hadiza Maina, a senior Development Finance Officer at the CBN, Olaitan
said the apex bank was favourably disposed to increasing women’s access
to finance “to enable them play their expected role in economic
development.”
By promoting gender equality in access to finance,
50 per cent of the population would be empowered to contribute
effectively to economic development Olaitan noted.
To ensure
greater access to finance by woman, the CBN he said has allocated
resources through different programmes devoted to women alone.
For
instance, he said that under the N220 billion Micro, Small and Medium
Enterprises Development Fund (MSMEDF), 60% of the Fund was allocated to
women based enterprises.
According to him, “Access to finance is
often cited as one of the major factors impeding the growth of
women-owned businesses in developing countries. In view of the peculiar
challenges faced by women in accessing financial services in Nigeria,
the CBN has established the N220 million MSMEDF, Agric credit guarantees
scheme, Anchor Borrowers Programme and financial inclusion programmes.”
These
financial interventions he explained “are innovative ways of improving
women’s access to finance at mainly single digit interest rate, which
will improve their potentials for job creation and inclusive growth on
our country.”
Earlier, the Special Advicer to the CBN Governor on
Sustainable Banking, Dr Aisha Mahmood, said women were key to the
economic development of Nigeria.
According to her, “it has been
proven that women have immense potentials as engines of growth and
economic development. Consequently, empowering them becomes beneficial
to the society as large,” she said.
During the technical session,
it was revealed that a 2016 report by Elfina, a U.K. Government project
on Access to Financial Services in Nigeria, showed that 21.4 million
females, that is 42.7 per cent of the total female population in Nigeria
were financially excluded.
The report showed that financial access
was skewed towards the male population, which had only 35.8 per cent of
its population financially excluded.
Source: journalng.com