By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The Bank of Industry (BoI) has opposed the scrapping of the bank and the establishment of National Development Bank of Nigeria (NDBN).
At the one-day public hearing organised on Monday by the Senate Committee on Bank, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions in National Assembly on a bill seeking to establish NDBN, the Acting Managing Director of BoI, Mr Waheed Olagunju, described the move as anti-people.
He argued that the BoI already handles the responsibilities the proposed institution plans to carry out when granted the approval to operate.
“We are of the opinion that BoI as presently constituted is fulfilling the mandate envisaged in the proposed legislation by supporting genuine entrepreneurs.
“Therefore, it should be left to continue its operations as it is. The merger envisaged in the proposed bill has already taken place,” Mr Olagunju submitted.
However, he advised the government to provide more capital to the BoI so as to be more efficient, stressing that the bank was already making impact in the business environment.
“BOI should be provided with more capital to be able to further support the real sector instead of duplicating functions by creating new DFIS, bearing in mind the failure of similar DFIs in the past such as NBCI, NERFUND, People’s Bank, Community Banks etc,” he said.
Furthermore, the BoI chief said, “We advise that the National Assembly support industrialisation by enacting legislations that would help create an enabling environment for business to thrive such as an amendment to Land Use Act, tax incentives for SMES, establishment of industrial Park.”
This, he posited, “would substantially address the demand side challenges of finance SMEs in Nigeria as vagaries of the business environment has been making the sector unattractive to private and public lenders.”
Dipo Olowookere