The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said it is working with the Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) to establish not less than N30 billion agriculture/SMEs (AGSME) fund.
This is in line with banking industry’s effort to support the funding and access to finance by Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs),

The Governor of CBN, Mr Godwin Emefiele who disclosed this while presenting to the journalists a communique of the just concluded 8th Annual Bankers Committee Retreat held in Lagos stated that the take off of the fund would be January, 2017.

He assured that what would form the fund would be contributions of portion of profit after taxes of DMBs.
He equally opined that the modality for the fund which would operate as an equity fund will be worked upon by the Bankers Committee and will be communicated to the public as soon as possible even as he assured that the guideline for take of the fund would be released soonest.

“We have announced it and what will happen is that in the next couple of days we will release the guideline for the public to know how they can access this facility but it is important to know that we going to build a strong corporate governance around it and what that means is that whatever project that people present to the banker committee under the economic sub committee of the banker committee will also go through a process of determining whether or not the project is viable”, he said.
Speaking further Emefiele stated that once the result of the banks was out like in the case of the 2016, the result will be out latest April 2017, banks would be made to provide whatever their percentage is that is out of their profit after tax and will be warehoused at the CBN to fund the project.

On the initial take off fund of the project, he explained, ” well we will wait for the banks to publish their results, but our initial estimate is that it will not be less than N30 billion that is for a start.