The Rivers State Microfinance Agency, RIMA, an agency of the government in Port Harcourt, says that over 70 percent of businesses operating in the state are fake and are not eligible to receive loan facilities from the government’s and the Bank of Industry’s N4 billion counterparts funding.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of RIMA, Pastor Jonathan Toby, revealed this during a media briefing flagging the commencement of the facility.
Toby noted that the Rivers State government signed an MoU with BoI on the 5th of January 2024 to collaborate on providing business facilities for businesses in the state, revealing that the total sum released for the process was N4 billion.
He said the fund is not for startups, Greenfields but for established businesses, Brownfields, that the import of the Memorandum of Understanding, MoU is to collaborate and pull funds together for the use of business men and women.
The RIMA MD said after the MoU was signed that N2 billion was released from Rivers State to Bank of Industry, noting that RIMA has identified business men and women in the state across the 23 local government areas of the state.
He said: “The conditions for the loans are so simple and we have two categories of the loan. We have the loan between N1000 to N1,000,000.00, for small businesses. This one is processed in house here. Those above N1,000,000.00 to 50,000,000 are processed by BoI.
We receive all the applications process them and see they meet up the requirements.
“After profiling, we still go out to verify the businesses to see whether the name given matches the photograph. The business address is correct.
We have done that in Port Harcourt and environ and we were surprise that more than 70 percent of them are impersonators.
“They impersonated. They gave use wrong addresses, wrong businesses. Some of them could not pick our calls, they failed to present themselves. We have kept them in view until they come back here to tell us that they are genuine.
“We have sieved them and we have 3,066 as at 30th of April, 2024. This number is qualified for disbursement. These 3066 businesses in the state are requesting for N1.62 billion. We have sent 103 applications to BoI for them to look at and do their due diligence.”
Toby, however, noted that the interest rate is 7.5 percent annually and the repayment tenure is six months to one year, while the BoI angle is between 2 to three years.