By Adedapo Adesanya
With deep consideration to the COVID-19 pandemic on economic activities, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced extending deadline for the recapitalisation of microfinance banks (MFBs) in the country.
This announcement was made in a circular with reference number FPR/DlR/GEN/ClR/07/054 entitled Re: Review of minimum capital requirements for microfinance banks in Nigeria.
It read in parts, “The Central Bank of Nigeria has extended the deadlines for compliance with the revised minimum capital requirements for all categories of the MFBs by one year as follows:
“The MFBs operating in rural, unbanked and under-banked areas (Tier 2) shall meet the N35 million capital threshold by April 2021 and N50 million by April 2022.
“The MFBs operating in urban and high density banked areas (Tier 1) are expected to meet the N100 million capital threshold by April 2021 and N200 million by April 2022.
“State MFBs shall increase their capital to N500 million by April 2021 and N1 billion by April 2022.
“And national MFBs are expected to meet minimum capital of N3.5 billion capital by April 2021 and N5 billion by April 2022.”
Before the apex bank commenced the recapitalisation of the microfinance institutions in 2018, the minimum capital base for national microfinance banks was N2 billion.
