The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has begun an aggressive drive to recover the loans it gave out under its development finance interventions.
Top on the list of debtors are state governments whose monthly Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) accruals are already being debited directly every month. The deductions will last six months.
Director, Development Finance of the CBN, Yusuf Yila, who disclosed this during a post-Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in Abuja yesterday, did not name the debtor states.
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Yila, who named the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) and Commercial Agric Credit (CAC) as some of the intervention programmes, said: “Every person(s) or state that took that loan (ABP) is going to pay. We have their BVN.”
Such persons referenced by Yila are smallholder farmers, who received funds for farming from state governments via the ABP, but have yet to pay them back.
The CBN director added that the apex bank was collaborating with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to ensure that the loans were recovered.
Yila said while the ABP loan repayments were particularly poor and that of CAC was almost excellent.
Under the ABP, the CBN gave out about N1 trillion but recovered only N400 billion. But under the CAC, the bank lent out about N800 billion and recovered N700 billion.
His words;
“We have started recovering loans from state governments. We have been doing a loan workout programme with them and we are debiting their monthly FAAC accruals directly for the loans.
“If a State government has taken N1 billion and is already in default, over a six-month period, we debit them N150 million every month. So, we’ve started that programme..
“So, every single loan that has been given out through any of our intervention programmes must be paid back.
“There is absolutely no mercy. We have started; we are in recovery mode. At the development finance department, we have begun to recover the loans.”