Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) has disclosed that it disbursed a total of N482 billion to Micro, Small, and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) since its inception, 65 percent of which were to women and youth-owned businesses.
Tony Okpanachi, managing director/CEO, DBN who announced this during the annual general meeting (AGM) of the bank, held in Abuja on Tuesday, also noted that the bank saw more funding request from financial institutions in 2021 as business recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“So, in the year 2019 the growth was higher, but in 2020 and 2021 we saw a return to growth in terms of the numbers, but cumulatively, we have disbursed almost a trillion naira since inception. In terms of recovery, as you are aware, small businesses were impacted by COVID-19, when funding from DBN was even more required to be able to support small businesses; and that’s what we saw happening in 2021.”
“Our cumulative disbursement of N482Billion especially to women-owned or managed businesses; is something that we are particularly delighted about from the perspective of women empowerment and poverty alleviation,” the MD emphasised.
While presenting the summary of the financial statement for the year ended December 31, 2021, to the shareholders, the Okpanachi informed that the bank’s gross earnings closed at N38.18 billion, profit before tax (PBT) at N22.76 billion representing, an increase of 25 percent from the previous year; while total assets also increased by 1.4 percent from N492.3 billion in 2020 to N499.2 billion in 2021.
The MD attributed the bank’s financial performance to “its robust corporate governance framework, business model as well as its top-notch enterprise risk management coupled with highly committed board of directors, management and staff. This is something that I am very proud of.”
According to him, “We continued to focus and deliver on our mandate of providing access to finance through our PFIs to Nigeria’s most critical, but underserved micro, small, and medium scale enterprises building their capacity and that of the PFIs in addition to the provision of partial credit guarantee to encourage lending to this very important sub-sector of the economy”.
He expressed gratitude to the bank’s shareholders, development partners, PFIs, board of directors, and employees for their continued support with a promise to continue to remain focused on the bank’s mandate as well as sustain efforts toward achieving sustainable financing and capacity building for the MSMEs.
On loan recovery, Okpanachi informed that the bank currently do not have non-performing loans(NPLs), and all financial institutions have been able to meet their obligation.
“Today, we have zero non-performing loans (NPLs), all our portfolios are performing. We are a wholesale institution, so our direct customers are the financial institutions. Financial institutions also do their credit appraisal, they take the credit risk and lend to MSMEs that they are sure will be able to repay,” he said.
“If you look at the NPL, that is industry level, it is still below the 5 percent from reports we see from the central bank. So by and large, the lending to these MSMEs has not been negatively impacted in terms of NPL,” he added.
Speaking further on the bank’s future plans, the CEO informed that DBN will continue to deepen relationships, and expand channels of disbursement to more financial institutions and also extend lending to start-ups.
“You know we make our own lending through commercial banks, microfinance banks, mortgage banks and other financial institutions, so we are expanding that, we are bringing in more financial institutions on board to able to use them as channels to disburse funds.
