The National Association of Micro finance Banks (NAMB) said on Wednesday in Abuja that microfinance banks improved the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 3 per cent in 2011.
Alhaji Kabir Yar’adua, NAMB's Executive Secretary, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Yar'adua said that the association was doing all it could to ensure that it stepped up the its GDP contribution to At least 20 per cent.
“The intention is for the contribution to be up 15 to 20 per cent. We have a long way but surely we are going there. All indicators are pointing to that direction and don’t forget recently the Central Bank sanitised the sub-sector.’’
Yar’adua said a number of factors were working against the realisation of the objectives of the micro finance banks and gave the assurance that the association would do all it could to address some of the challenges.
He said that the inability of people to differentiate between microfinance banks and microfinance institutions was affecting the operations of microfinance banks.
“There is a lot of mistrust from the public; public don’t trust microfinance banks because they don’t know the difference between microfinance institutions and microfinance banks.
“We have microfinance institutions that get registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission to operate as cooperative societies or microfinance institutions.’’
He said that the mistrust had impacted negatively on the members.
?According to him, no company has the right to canvass for deposits from the public without first obtaining licence from the central bank.
He suggested that Federal Government should introduce a kind of intervention fund to the microfinance industry just like it has done in other areas of the economy.
According to Yar’adua, the association has been meeting with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to set up the Microfinance Banks Development Fund.
He said that the fund would empower the micro and small enterprises, being the engine of growth of any economy.
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