The Bank of Industry has said high cost of doing business and other challenges are major reasons why manufacturers lack access to financing options. The Managing Director of the Bank of Industry, Olukayode Pitan, said this during thevAnnual General Meeting of the Apapa Branch of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria.
Pitan, who was represented at the event by the bank’s Divisional Head, Large Enterprises, Isa Omagu, expressed concern that a significant fraction of the manufacturing industry did not have access to finance due to a wide range of factors.
According to him, other factors such as lack of credit history, non-availability of collateral, vulnerability to market fluctuations and the highly unstructured nature of many manufacturing entities also accounted for major reasons why many of them lacked access to finance.
He said, “High cost of doing business, that issue can never be overflogged. That is one of the biggest problems of manufacturers. For manufacturers to improve their access to finance, they have to ensure that they keep proper records. They need to do proper bookkeeping to make themselves more bankable.”
He advised businesses to increase efforts to improve business and technical knowledge in order to improve their chances of accessing finance. In its Bi-Annual Economic Review, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria had identified lack of access to funding as a major factor that had stunted the growth of the industry.
