Bank of Industry (BoI) has urged feed millers in agro business to access the N15 billion credit of the bank.
Executive Director of the bank, Waheed Olagunju made the call during Animal Feed Workshop held in Lagos.
He said the bank was ready to support such business owners on a sustainable basis so that the N15 billion lending target, lying fallow, could be put to good use.
Olagunju stated ‘’Funding is available to agro-business especially those in the animal feed milling sector. We have the N15 billion lending target in 2015 but people are not coming up to access it. Animal feed is one of the clusters we are focusing under value chain development and we are ready to work with the agro businesses’’.
He further said ‘’the bank is ready to work with our development partners like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’’.
According to Olagunju, BoI is proactive and responsive to the needs of the agro business sector.
He also disclosed that the bank’s interest rate is 10 per cent on the average while we have single digit interest rates in some cases
He said that the bank would open more offices for consultations across the country.
‘’We have opened more offices, from seven, now we have increased to 15 office outlets across the country for easy access of our services’’ he stated.
Olagunju said that the BoI had also improved its loan processing period from minimum of six weeks to 48 hours.
He urged borrowers to be ICT-inclined to fast track the processing periods of their loans.
He hinted that they could process their loans online, using the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) customer portal.