…As FG invests $20m in 3 teaching hospitals
Uche Usim, Abuja
Hopes of easier access to loans were bolstered on Wednesday when the Development Bank of Nigeria Plc (DBN) and the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at promoting lending to the agricultural sub-sector of the economy and its value chains.
The signing ceremony, which took place at the NIRSAL headquarters in Abuja was a strategic collaboration that will impact positively on agriculture and all the value chain players and thus address the concerns of financial institutions on the high risk of lending to the sector.
Speaking at the occasion, the Managing Director of DBN, Tony Okpanachi, stressed that, “the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), if well managed, have the potential to achieve key macro-economic objectives of the Federal Government, which include but are not limited to job creation, poverty alleviation, financial inclusion, development of technology and so on.” For his part, the Managing Director of NIRSAL, Aliyu Abdulhameed, informed that “NIRSAL’s primary mandate was to facilitate the flow of credit, finance and investments into agriculture and agribusiness.”
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) and the Ministry of Health on Wednesday announced the execution of a joint venture deal for investment of over $20 million in three federal healthcare institutions in Nigeria namely, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH, Lagos), the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH, Kano) and the Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia (FMCU, Abia).