The Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) said, it has disbursed a total of N420 billion out of it’s N700 billion to Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs) owned by women in the last seven (7) years.

The Managing Director of DBN, Mr Tony Okpanachi disclosed this Friday at the celebration of International Women Day held at Wuye Ultra Modern Market, Abuja.

The theme of this year’s celebration is:”Celebrating the Amazons in the Market Place-Inspire Inclusion”.

Executive Director, Finance and Corporate Services, Mrs Ijeoma Ozulumba who represented Mr Okpanachi at the occasion said about 60 Percent of the total disbursement went to women.
She noted that reports from Participation Financial Institutions(PFIs) indicate that Non-Performing loans(NPLs) from disbursement to women was the lowest in the industry.

“So far from the intervention that we’ve seen, our banks have reported to us that our portfolio has the lowest non performing loans, there’s good recovery in the Loans and also women portfolio is even lower in terms of default”, she said.
Mrs. Ozulumba said the bank has disbursed over 700billion naira as loans to entrepreneurs with about 137 billion naira to women and women owned businesses.

“In the number of end borrowers for our loans 50 percent have been women”
She explained that the development institution has provided support for the Small and medium enterprises beyond finances with the sole aim of boosting economic growth”.

She noted that specific training are also given to women on how they can manage their business and keep their books, how they can manage your operations, access to market access to networks as well.

She said beyond funding, DBN does a lot of training, especially location specific training, stressing that Last year, the bank was in the North East and Northwest to ensure that women have access to finance, have access to knowledge, to grow their business and to develop their businesses. So this is very important.”