Re: BOI YES programme, waste of time
I refer to a piece written by Amira Abdullahi Ahmad in the Daily Trust of Thursday, December 22, 2016 on the above subject. Reading through the arguments raised by the writer, it is sufficient to draw the attention of Amira, who claimed to be a participant of the Bank of Industry’s YES Programme, to some […]
I refer to a piece written by Amira Abdullahi Ahmad in the Daily Trust of Thursday, December 22, 2016 on the above subject.
Reading through the arguments raised by the writer, it is sufficient to draw the attention of Amira, who claimed to be a participant of the Bank of Industry’s YES Programme, to some basic rules guiding loans remittance, even those being issued by the BOI.
Contrary to her claims, the YES programme is not a deceit and the bank has not lied by not making early disclosure of the terms of this facility since such information was only meant for successful participants who must have scaled through the selection processes.
It is instructive that previous initiatives like the BOI had gone under, largely due to insufficient guarantee to ensure payback for other beneficiaries advantages.
In line with observance of best practices therefore, measures to safeguard the grant, which is a revolving loan, where other participants can draw from can only be assured through the application of measures considered necessary for the sake of continuity and realisation of the mandate for which the BOI was established.
Past well-intentioned intervention initiatives like the Bank of Agric, People’s Bank of Nigeria and others like them would have endured till today if such measures where beneficiaries and issuing institutions were protected of their investments and repayment were in place.
It will be off point to situate that no one has benefitted from the BOI grants; not with the disbursements of N48.44 million loan to beneficiaries of the Kaduna Start-up Entrepreneurship Programme whose business proposals were bankable.
The programme was designed by the Kaduna State government, the Kaduna Business School (KBS) in partnership with the BoI to empower aspiring entrepreneurs to be able to access various intervention funds.
Similar partnership template was adopted in Taraba State where BoI disbursed N700 million for on-lending to entrepreneurs in the state.
The funds, which were pulled together by the state government and BoI, under its matching fund scheme following the execution of a Memorandum of Understanding for the establishment of a N700 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Fund, was targeted at boosting economic activities and manage unemployment.
The bank has not at any time concealed the fact that only those whose loans requests met it’s Risk Acceptance Criteria (RAC) would benefit from the facilities and have even supported applicants whose applications fell short of its criteria is the past to measure up at different times.
Rather than blaming the BoI, who is only discharging its duties, state government should be encouraged to come to the aid of these budding entrepreneurs whose dreams of contributing to the economic survival and industrialisation of our nation are earnestly demanded.
Like Kaduna and Taraba states, and indeed other states that have identified with the bank as partners in their bid to leverage on the platform of the BoI for youth empowerment, and since the YES Programme merely requires guarantee from these applicants, states should step in to guarantee these youths in the areas of assurances and monitoring.
Remi Adebayo, Abuja.