The Rivers State Microfinance Agency (RIMA) has disbursed N800 million to 1,387 businesses in the state, under Governor Siminialayi Fubara’s microfinance credit scheme.
Speaking in Port Harcourt, on Thursday, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of RIMA, Pastor Jonathan Tobin noted that the agency had partnered with the Bank of Industries to provide a N4 billion loan facility, with N800 million released in four tranches.
The modalities of the disbursement, Tobin said a database of over 4,000 profiled businesses which enabled the agency to select beneficiaries on a first-come, first-served basis.
Giving a breakdown, Tobin noted that Female borrowers account for 58.9% of the total, with 818 recipients, while male borrowers make up 41% adding that the agency has also inclusive of persons living with disabilities, with 13 beneficiaries.
Also, he said repayment efforts are ongoing, with N75.658 million received so far, and N3.647 million in interest payments.
Tobin said: “In the N4 Billion from the Bank of Industry, we have done four tranches of N200,000,000.00 for each of the groups. We have a little above 4000 applicants on our database who are applying for the loan.
“We first had 481 applicants for the first N200 million. What we do is, when we get people we send their names to BOI Lagos. BOI do their due diligence on the applications. When they are done they will send the N200 million per tranche.
“Then we send N50 million out for disbursement. When they disburse 75% of the N200 million which will be N150 million we forward another batch to BOI for due diligence. In the first batch, 381 individuals benefited.
“312 benefitted in the second tranche while 321 individuals got the funds in the third tranche.
“We are now on the fourth tranche and 340 will benefit from the fourth round. In total 1387 businesses will be benefitting from the loan valued at N800,000,000.00. In the total number, we have 818 females while 58.7% of the total number of the beneficiaries and their application is valued at N469,495,760.00.
“So it is clear that more women borrowed. In this Male, 41% of the are men valued at N330,544,000.00, whereas 13 people living with disabilities accessed N5,005,000.”
He noted that for customers seeking to access more than N10 million and above BOI has disbursed to eight applicants and that another tranche of 17 applicants would soon get the funding.
He said: “BOI has disbursed to 8 customers valued at N119,888,000. Another 17 customers are due for disbursement. By next week the 17 customers valued at N217,444,858,000 would have been disbursed.”
However, RIMA has also detected a significant number of fraudulent applications, with 1,600 cases of impersonation identified.
These individuals according to Tobin, attempted to access the business credit using other people’s businesses, regretting that there are so many sharp practices among the applicants, but noted that RIMA has remained discreet in assessing those who benefit from the process.
He added that one of the Challenges arises from businesses lacking necessary criteria, such as tax payments because they are not used to accessing bank loans.
“There are so many sharp practices. So we have commenced verification programmes. We visit business unexpectedly.1600 cases of impersonation. They used somebody’s shop to stand as their own.
Some of the applicants do not have any shop.
“We are doing everything to ensure that we have micro credit available for business in the state based on the plan of the governor. We encourage the people of the state to take the loan and pay it back in record time.”
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