THE Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved credit facilities totaling $1.3billion to support the newly licensed Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN).
The newly licensed bank is being funded by some long term loans from some of the nation’s development partners.
Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun who briefed State House correspondents after the council meeting, said the World Bank had given the country $500million repayable over 21 years at concessional rate.
She added that the African Development Bank will also give $450million; KFW $200million and the French Development Agency will give $130million for the purpose.
She said access to the money will be granted upon obtaining the legal opinion of the Attorney General of the Federation and the approval of the National Assembly.
According to her, “to access this money, we are ready to disburse but there were two requirements that we need to make and one of them is the legal opinion by the Attorney General of the Federation and the other is the National Assembly approval.
“Before it goes to the National Assembly, it needs to be approved by FEC and the FEC simply approved today that these loan requests should go to the National Assembly for approval so we can access this money and the Development Bank of Nigeria can take off fully as it is expected to transform Financing to our MSME sector.
“The council enthusiastically approved these facilities which are long tenure, meaning that the DBN will be able to lend to our SMEs over much longer periods and at much lower rates. So, the impact on the SMEs will be quiet considerable.”
Adeosun also revealed that FEC has given its approval for the procurement of project managers and verification consultants to bring 200,000 of military personnel onto the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information System (IPPIS) platform.
She said all military personnel should be brought under the system by the third quarter of this year.
“The total number for all are drawn from the Army, Navy, Air Force and is put at 200,000. So, it is when we begin to verify that we will know whether they are more or less,” she said.
She added: “We have assurances about the savings that we typically generate when we bring agencies on IPSS.
“Generally when we bring agencies onto IPSS the payroll goes down, efforts to sanitize our payroll and make sure that the money we are spending on salaries is very accurate. So bringing the military on boards is a big step in that area.”
