Tag Archives: Soft Loans

N60b Soft Loans Coming For One Million Traders

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No fewer than one million traders and artisans are billed to get a soft loan of N60,000 each this year as part of the safety nets for the poor in Budget 2016, it was learnt at the weekend.

An insight into the budget estimates, which the Senate is still dilly dallying over, revealed that this plan will cost an estimated N60 billion.

Yesterday, Senior Special assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on National Assembly matters Senator Ita Enang confirmed that the president had written a letter to the National Assembly on the budget which is expected to be read by the presiding officers during plenary tomorrow.

A senior federal government official at the weekend described the controversy in the Senate regarding two versions of the proposed budget as a “distraction and a storm in a tea-cup.”

The official added that the budget estimates are a bunch of proposals which would only become sacrosanct relatively after becoming an appropriation. “To now have all this hue and cry on alleged versions; and switched copies is not just a distraction, but a storm in a tea-cup.”

Ready for the implementation of the proposal among others in the budget, the official confirmed the appointment of Mrs Maryam Uwais as a Special Adviser to the President working the Office of the Vice President, who will be in charge the programme.

There are five other social investment plans of the Buhari administration already provided for in the budget with about N500 billion to be spent, which is nine per cent of the total budget.

Credit: Nation

CBN Plans Soft Loans For One Million Graduates

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The Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, on Thursday announced that a low-interest loan scheme for one million young graduates would commence next year.

The governor said the special loan scheme, which would be managed by the central bank in collaboration with commercial banks, was part of the strategy of the Federal Government to boost the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises sub-sector and curtail unemployment among the youth.

Emefiele made the disclosure in Lagos during the opening ceremony of the seventh Annual Bankers’ Committee Retreat.

The CBN governor said, “We need to get more and more people to be employed, and we will need the support of the banks to begin to see how we lower our risk acceptance criteria to give support to our young graduates.

“In the course of the next few weeks, we will be unfolding a plan of support of the CBN to create employment for at least one million young graduates in Nigeria in 2016. That will entail support from Nigerian banks and our development institutions to see how we will channel these concessionary loans to companies that are MSMEs.”

Emefiele said the plunge in commodity prices, especially crude oil, had led to sharp fall in the nation’s revenue, adding that Nigeria and other oil exporting countries were facing hard times, a situation that necessitated the need to diversify the economy away from oil.

Credit: Punch