The Governing Council of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has approved the expansion of the Nigerian Content Intervention (NCI) Fund from US$200 million to US$350 million.
Julius Bokuro, special assistant on media and public affairs to the minister of state for petroleum, Chief Timipre Sylva, in a statement on Sunday, said enlargement of the fund by US$150 million was part of the decisions taken at the recent NCDMB Governing Council meeting, which was held virtually last month.
The meeting, which was chaired by the minister of state for petroleum resources, who is the chairman of the council, also approved that US$100 million from the additional funds would be deployed to boost the five existing loan products of the NCI Fund, which include manufacturing, asset acquisition, contract finance, loan refinancing and community contractor financing.
He explained that the council also approved that US$20 million and US$30 million respectively be deployed to two newly developed loan product types – the Intervention Fund for Women in Oil and Gas and PETAN Products, which include Working Capital loans and Capacity Building loans for PETAN member companies.
He recalled that the NCI Fund was instituted in 2017 as a US$200 million Fund managed by the Bank of Industry (BoI) engaged to facilitate on-lending to qualified stakeholders in the Nigerian oil and gas industry on five loan product types.
The Fund is a portion of the Nigerian Content Development Fund (NCDF) aggregated from the one per cent deduction from the value of contracts executed in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry.
He explained that about 94 per cent of the NCI Funds has been disbursed to 27 beneficiaries as at May 2020, even as NCDMB has received new applications from 100 companies for nearly triple the size of the original fund.
He said the guidelines for the NCI Fund provide that beneficiaries of the Manufacturing Loan and Asset Acquisition Loan can access a maximum of US$10 million respectively.
Also, beneficiaries of Contract Finance Loan can access US$5 million while beneficiaries of the Loan Re-financing package can access US$10 million, with beneficiaries of the Community Contractor Finance Scheme limited to N20 million.
The maximum tenure for all loan types is five years and applicants cannot have two different loans running simultaneously.
