Worried by the spate of accumulated N1.5billion Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), loans yet unpaid, the Ekiti State Government said it is strategising on facilitating prompt repayment of loans acquired by small business owners in the state.
The strategy Daily Sun gathered, aims at providing a stress-free repayment scheme of the loans that were granted under the Small and Medium Enterprise Support Scheme since the administration of former governor, Segun Oni, to date.
Speaking at a meeting with the loan guarantors in the state capital, Ado-Ekiti, recently, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Micro-credit and Enterprise Development Agency (MEDA), Otunba Kayode Fasawe, disclosed that the government was determined to recover all the loans to the last kobo.
Fasawe said MEDA, in conjunction with the participating Micro Finance Banks (MFBs), had sought the support of the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant General (AG) for the deduction of such loans from the salaries of the guarantors who are public servants beginning from the month of September, this year. He, however, urged them to prevail on the beneficiaries to begin repayment to protect their own incomes.
Fasawe said the state government was passionate about workers’ plight, which informed the delay in the implementation of the policy and the eventual call for the meeting and dialogues on the way forward.
The Special Adviser, who said the attitude of the people to loan repayment has deprived the state from accessing further funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), stressed that this had been counter-productive to the economic growth of the state.
Appraising the success level of the policy direction, the MEDA boss added that over N30 million has been recovered during the first three weeks of its implementation, through the use of text messages and dialogues with the guarantors.