The Bank of Industry (BOI) has come under attack for alleged mismanagement of Dangote grant meant for micro entrepreneurs.
The bank is also criticised by the Association of Micro Entrepreneurs (AMEN) for what its members described as a deliberate effort to change the credit guidelines to suit the whims and caprices of the bank.
BOI could not counter the allegations at press time, as its spokesperson, Hadiza Olaosebikan, said she was in a meeting.
However, AMEN, which has over 3,000 members, insisted that in its four years of existence, only one micro business entrepreneur has benefited from BOI loans. It challenged and challenged the bank to produce counter evidence.
In 2011, a partnership between BOI and Dangote Group raised N5 billion credit facility for lending to small and micro entrepreneurs but four years down the line, members of AMEN, led by Saviour Ichie, said none of them has benefitted.
According to AMEN, the beneficiaries of the loan are micro finance banks (MFBs) which lend to the public at 5 per cent interest instead of 1 per cent stipulated by Dangote.
To make matters worse, BOI is said to have created conditions that make it difficult for entrepreneurs to access its facilities.
One of the conditions requires a prospective beneficiary to open a joint account with a member of its staff in which account the operator is expected to set aside 10 per cent of the value of the loan applied for.
Also, the prospective beneficiary has to use the funds to buy machinery only from BOI’s designated dealers, where the machines are sold at inflated prices.
The potential beneficiary was not allowed to use the cash as working capital until recently when AMEN members protested against some of the conditions and BOI allowed about 5 per cent cash as running capital.
Another micro entrepreneur, Ikenna Michael, explained why the N220 billion small and micro enterprises (SME) credit facility set aside by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) would fail to get to the intended target.
Michael said most commercial banks do not access the facility because the CBN deducts the money from their reserves monthly even when a transaction has not been finalised with a prospective beneficiary.
“We wrote to some of the banks, and they replied that the CBN’s condition of deducting from statutory reserves of the banks every month is discouraging.
“It was in the course of our meeting with banks’ officials to access the loan that they told us the CBN impediment. One or two banks have shown interest in the facility; the rest are running away,” Michael disclosed.