The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency, SMEDAN, and Sterling Bank have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, to create a loan portfolio of 5 billion Naira at a single digit interest rate.
The Director General of SMEDAN, Mr Charles Odii, during the signing of the MoU in Abuja, Nigeria’s Capital, said with this portfolio, approximately 10,000 small businesses will be able to access finance.
According to him, “what we want to do as an agency is first of all, make this access to finance easier, because we understand that finance is very scarce and finance is very expensive in this part of the world.”
The Managing Director of Sterling Bank, Mr Abubakar Suleiman explained that the loan tenure target is two years adding that the bank intends to give moratorium based on various business models.
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“The loan will not be based on collateral when you apply for the loan, it will be based on your business, it will be based on the fact that you do not have bad credit histroy, it will be based on the fact that you are law abiding citizen and it will be based on the contract between the bank and the business enterprise.” Mr Suleiman said.
“We will be publishing a link annouced by SMEDAN that will allow us build a waiting list for all those who are interested, and two weeks from now the process will commence for them to start accessing the loan, it would be via the SMEDAN platform.”
Mr Suleiman also disclosed that the bank developed a platform called BANKER, designed entirely to focus on small businesses which not only allows them access the loan but helps businesses organise their business and keep records.
