ACCI to transform its cooperative into bank, Al-Mujtaba says

The Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industries is in the process of transforming its cooperative into a bank in partnership with foreign investors, the president, Dr Abubakar Al-Mujtaba, has said. “A French group came here and we had meetings. They are interested in bringing in funding and have signed an MoU,” Al-Mujtaba told Daily Trust […]

The Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industries is in the process of transforming its cooperative into a bank in partnership with foreign investors, the president, Dr Abubakar Al-Mujtaba, has said.

“A French group came here and we had meetings. They are interested in bringing in funding and have signed an MoU,” Al-Mujtaba told Daily Trust in an interview.

“The idea is that they will be putting in more money for it to be a viable cooperative, which we can convert into microfinance and later into a full-fledged deposit money bank,” he explained further.

He added that the focus of the microfinance bank is to give loans to businesses and that the loans would be done without many hurdles.

“We already have some money and what we told them is that when they come on board, we will quantify all the assets we have and it will be our equity contribution and they will bring their own and merge them together.”

Commenting on the challenge of power facing the country, he said that Nigeria cannot achieve the infrastructural development envisaged by the present administration with power generation not commensurate with the population growth.

He said with power generation below 10,000 megawatts, industries will still rely on alternative power leading to high production costs as well as increases in prices of commodities.

“We are not yet generating up to 10,000 megawatts but South Africa produces over 60,000 megawatts and their population is one-quarter of Nigeria’s, so you can see the gap. If we are to go buy what South Africa is producing today, we should be talking of not less than 200,000 megawatts for Nigeria. So, if you compare that with the less than 10,000 megawatts today, it is a far cry.”

While commending the federal government for the launch of the National Development Plan, he urged the next administration not to jettison the new plan as it would aid the development of critical infrastructures in the country.