N137bn loan disbursed to female entrepreneurs out of N700bn loans-DBN
By Patience Ikpeme
The Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) has provided loans totaling more than N700 billion to entrepreneurs, with N137 billion going to women and businesses owned by females.
Mrs. Ijeoma Ozulumba, Executive Director of Finance and Corporate Services at the bank, shared this information during an event celebrating International Women’s Day with the theme “Celebrating Amazons in the Market Place”, on Friday in Wuye, Abuja.
She also revealed that the bank has a lower rate of loan repayment defaults compared to other banks in the industry, and noted that 50% of their loans go to women.
Mrs. Ijeoma emphasized that the institution offers assistance to small and medium enterprises in various ways beyond just financial support to help enhance economic development. Additionally, they provide specialized training to help entrepreneurs better manage their businesses and maintain proper financial records.
“Last year we were in the North East and Northwest went round six states in northern Nigeria to ensure that women have access to finance, have access to knowledge, to grow their business and to develop their businesses. So this is very important.
“Every year we do a nationwide training program as well. Where we go to Lagos, Port-harcourt and Abuja here, we also provide of training and making sure that they have the knowledge. We also provide certain grants to women specifically in small amounts to help them scale up their business and to help them grow and be able to do better and to manage their business more effectively.
“So we work through banks, we don’t lend directly to customers. We lend to what we call our participating financial institutions and these financial institutions then make these funds available to women. So far from the intervention that we’ve seen, our banks have reported to us that our portfolio has the lowest non performing loans, there’s good recovery in the loans and also women portfolio is even lower in terms of default”.
