As part of efforts to help generate employment among the country’s teeming youth population, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Monday unveiled what it tagged “a Creative Industry Financing Initiative (CIFI).”
In a notice on its website, the CBN said the initiative, which rests on four pillars, namely: fashion, information technology, movie, and music, was designed in collaboration with the Bankers’ Committee (comprising chief executives of the nation’s banks and industry-wide organization).
The statement set a maximum interest rate of 9.0% per annum (all charges inclusive) to all loans under the initiative, with the repayment period ranging from three years for software engineering student loan, to 10 years for movie production and distribution, fashion, information technology (IT) and music.
In all, a total of N200bn is expected to be disbursed under the initiative.
Specifically, the notice urged interested applicants into fashion, information technology, movie production, movie distribution, music as well as software engineering student loan to submit applications to their banks for approval and disbursement.
While applicants for software engineering student loans can get as much as N3m loan, those into movie production business can get up to N30m and N500m for the movie distribution business.
Such applicants are required to prepare their business plans or statement on how much they require for the business covering rental and service fees for fashion and IT business; training and equipment fees, in addition to rental/service fees for the music business.
To access a loan under the initiative, applicants are to approach any bank of their choice, stating how much is needed, following which the application is scrutinized and the loan facilitated.
