BoI disburses N48.44m to 15 entrepreneurs under KADSTEP scheme

Having met its risk acceptance criteria for their proposed businesses, the Bank of Industry (BoI) has disbursed N48.44million loan to beneficiaries of the Kaduna Start up Entrepreneurship Programme.

According to the bank, apart from benefiting from other loan windows of the bank, under the KADSTEP, successful small business operators would also have opportunities to leverage on existing N1bn matching fund.

While 25 budding entrepreneurs enlisted in the programme, which comprised two months intensive entrepreneurial training, and one-month practical session in business plans development, only 15 graduates got loan cheques ranging from N2million to N5million.

KADSTED was designed by the Kaduna State Government in conjunction with the Kaduna Business School and the development finance institution to empower aspiring entrepreneurs to be able to access various intervention funds available to support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the state.

Speaking while presenting cheques to the beneficiaries of the programme in Kaduna, the BoI Acting Managing Director, Waheed Olagunju in a statement said that those whose loans were approved were the candidates that met the bank’s Risk Acceptance Criteria(RAC).

He, however, noted that the bank and KBS are working with the other 10 in a hand- holding manner and guiding them towards also meeting the laid down RAC.

According to him, the bank is putting up the measures to increase the success rate of KADSTEP graduates with a view to reducing the mortality rate of small businesses.

“We are optimistic that most of them will eventually scale through and encourage others to complete their applications in good time so that they could also become beneficiaries,” he promised.

While recommending the KADSTEP model to other states of the federation, Olagunju restated the bank’s commitment to continue to provide financial support to existing and start-up businesses across the nation.