The management of Enugu-based Umuchinemere Pro-credit Micro Finance Bank (UPMFB), on Wednesday said its loans and advances portfolio increased by 12.83% to N1.113bn in 2018, up by N126.605m from N986.976m in the previous year.
In a statement by Abuchi Anueyiagu, its Head Public/Media Relations Unit, Umuchinemere MFB put the number of micro small and medium scale enterprises that benefitted, including farmers and low income earners within its operational area spanning 10 of the 17 local government areas in Enugu State, most of them in the rural areas, at 5,201 customers
A gender distribution of the beneficiaries showed that the male folk dominated, as 3,170 of them received a total of N653,838,754, an improvement over the N407,599,000 granted to 2,618 male beneficiaries in 2017; as against N459,743,750 that went to 2,031 women entrepreneurs.
A breakdown according to sector showed that the bank granted N87m loans to farmers alone for different agricultural purposes.
The statement quoted Charles Udeani, head of Credit at the bank as saying: “The multiplier effects of lending a billion Naira to those beneficiaries in the calendar year, a period of serious cash squeeze in the economy, meant a big contribution to the growth of the economy” by Umuchinemere Pro-Credit MFB.
He noted that promoters of the bank- the Catholic Diocese of Enugu, have been using Umuchinemere MFB as a veritable vehicle of its economic evangelisation mission.
The bank’s agriculture portfolio, he assured, has contributed “tremendously towards the attainment of food and protein sufficiency in the localities where the bank operates, while the medium scale farmers among the loans’ beneficiaries help to create jobs and wealth for the teeming population.
“Many low income civil servants in the State who benefitted from UPMFB’s building/housing loans, through our salary loans and overdraft, attest to the fact that without Umuchinemere Pro-credit Micro Finance Bank they would not have become house owners today, while those who availed themselves of our Education credit facilities would not have been able to train their children/wards”, he stressed further.
The bank however urged beneficiaries of its agric loans to strictly abide by what they were taught during their pre-loan training on the need to promptly report natural disasters affecting their farms. This, it explained, would assist in indemnifying them by the Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), under its Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund (ACGSF).
UPFMB recalled that many farmers who suffered losses due to natural disasters affecting their farms were unable to get through with their claims because of late reporting of such cases and failure to follow the reporting procedure they were taught during their pre-loan training.