Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Godwin Emefiele made this
disclosure while addressing participants at a webinar hosted by the Deputy
Governor in charge of the Financial System Stability (FSS) Directorate, Mrs.
Aishah Ahmad, as part of activities to commemorate the 2022 International
Women’s Day (IWD) at the CBN.
Emefiele revealed that females had benefitted hugely from
the bank’s intervention programmes such as the Agribusiness Small and Medium
Enterprise Investment Scheme (AGSMEIS) and the COVID-19 Targeted Credit
Facility (TCF).
Specifically, he said that out of N134.67 billion disbursed
to 37,273 AGSMEIS beneficiaries, as of January 2022, 33 percent (N44.1 billion)
went to 12,511 female beneficiaries, while out of N349.51 billion disbursed to
712,442 total beneficiaries under the TCF, 45 percent (N159.21 billion) went to
330,128 female beneficiaries.
He stated that the MSME Development Fund (MSMEDF) was
designed to allocate at least 60 per cent of the fund to women and women-owned
enterprises of which 60.3 per cent of the of 229,579 beneficiaries are women.
In addition, out of the 211,306 financial statements
currently registered in the collateral registry, 92,091, representing 43.6
percent, were female borrowers.
He lamented that women had been disproportionately affected
by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of climate change, noting that
the CBN “was using the 2022 IWD as an opportunity to celebrate women who are in
the frontline of these twin crisis”.
Emefiele said the bank was “taking strategic actions in
areas such as recruitment, retention, succession planning, and return-to-office
work arrangements in order to address these gender gaps”.
He declared that the CBN had since surpassed affirmative
action with 32 percent of the total workforce being female.
“It is only by unleashing the full potential of women to
participate fully in the economy that we can strengthen growth, eliminate
poverty, create jobs and respond effectively to the mounting global challenges,
from the pandemic to climate change,” Emefiele declared.
He reiterated that the CBN had also issued a policy that
requires a minimum of 30 percent of female representation on boards and 40
percent at the top management level in the Banking Industry.
This, he said, was similar to the National Financial
Inclusion Strategy recommending increasing female staff of microfinance banks
to 30 percent.
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