As Nigeria joined its counterpart across the globe to
celebrate the 2017 International Women’s Day, the Bank of Industry (BoI), has
said that the womenfolk could create about 79,000 by 2019.
Group head, Gender Business, Bol, Mrs Adebisi
Ajayi, stated this at the‘BoI 2017 International Women’s Day’ held in Lagos
yesterday.
“As of today, we have businesses done by women that have
created over 57,850 jobs created nationwide and the strategy of the BoI is a five
year strategy which will terminate in 2019. And by our projection, we expect
that 79,000 jobs would have been created by 2019.
We know that the population and demand are enormous, we
can only encourage our sister banks to key into supporting Bol in financing the
real sector and not just traders so that we can create jobs for people and
develop the economy,” she maintained.
She said the major challenge women face in business is
lack of proper corporate structure, adding that several measures have been
taken by BoI to address this issue in other to attract funding from banks. “We
have over 220 business development partners that help put documents together in
an acceptable way to the bank whereby you can easily access funds,” said Ajayi.
Acting Managing Director, BoI, Mr Waheed Olagunju, who
was represented by the Executive Director, Micro Enterprise Directorate, Mrs Toyin
Adeniji, said the event was to recognize the role women has played in the
empowerment of nations all across the world.
“From the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) we know
that 30 percent of registered businesses in Nigeria are owned by women or led
by women while 40 percent of Nigeria startups are promoted by women.
At BoI, our lending activities and our portfolio in the
last two years has doubled and that is a feat that is remarkable because it
shows how much gender sensitive we are. We do recognize the high importance of
women as an economic force and as a driver of transformation in Nigeria.
Our objective today is to provide a learning environment
and
Networking platform to help us as women make bold
decision that will
Take our businesses to the next level,” she stated
She explained that BoI is ready to support women; adding
that the bank
Has a dedicated gender desk that helps women across all
the various
Stages of their business.
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